I can understand those in the shipbuilding industry regarding ships just as large machines, without a soul. It is different when you sail in them for any length of time though. They develop characters and appear to live and breath even though they are machines.
They need to be well fed with oil (or coal in days gone by), or they will not work. Electricity is pulsing through their wiring veins and the beat of the engine is like a heartbeat. When I first went to sea, I was talking with the seamen on the poop deck of the old ore carrier
Sagamore when they were discussing this same subject. An old able seaman went over to one of the small vents on the side of the deck and told us to listen to it. It sounded for all the world like breathing, in and out. He then said to listen to it in heavy seas, and it would sound like panting, and gasping as the ship laboured to cope with the stresses. I only did trials on one ship, an oil tanker out of Cammell Lairds. We went up to the measured mile off the isle of Arran, returning 48 hours later. Being so new, the ship had no character and was just behaving like an awkward lump of steel with an engine in it.
But I sailed for 5 years in the passenger liner
Windsor Castle, and 11 years in the passenger liner
St. Helena, and developed a real love for them over the years. I also sailed in 17 other ships, from colliers to passenger liners, and they all had distinguishing traits that were usually different to sister ships that were identical, but behaved differently.
Other countries may have different ways of looking at it, but I was taking it from the British point of view, held by most of those who sailed in them!
Doesn't matter all that much to me, but I regard ships as "she.!" It does annoy me though when merchant ships are referred to as "Boats." Warships are never referred to as boats. Warships or battleships, why not "warboat" or "battleboat?"
Bob