Triton

In Sea Scouting, individual Sea Scout units are called ships, and each one has a unit number, just as individual land Scout or Boy Scout units are called troops and have a unit number. Therefore, a Sea Scout Ship is a functional unit of youth and leaders rather than a physical sea-going vessel. Unlike Boy Scout troops, however, most Sea Scout Ships also adopt a name for their unit that has special significance for the group, and it is by that ship’s name that the unit is often referred to. For example, our unit is technically Sea Scout Ship 468 and is known as SSS TRITON. A crew member might say, “I’m a crew member of the TRITON,” or he might say, “I belong to Ship 468.” This practice is a substantial parallel to the naval ships having both a name and a number, such as the destroyer USS EDSON (DD-946).  In our case, our first sailboat was named "Triton" and we have adopted her name in her memory.  More about "Triton" is detailed below (taken from wikipedia) as the name Triton is associated with mythology and popular culture.

In Greek mythology, Triton is the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite and lives with them in a golden palace in the depths of the sea. He rides the waves on horses, hippocamps (see below), and sea monsters and he carries a trident and a twisted conch shell, upon which he blows either violently or gently, to stir up or calm the waves.

Triton is usually represented as a merman, having the upper body of a human and the tail of a fish, but sometimes also with the forefeet of a horse and often accompanied by a Nereid (see below).

In later times there was a multiplicity of Tritons, each attending the various divinities associated with the sea.

Triton's fountain, by Gianlorenzo Bernini, at Rome

Like his father Poseidon, he carried a trident. However, Triton's special attribute was a twisted conch shell, on which he blew like a trumpet to calm or raise the waves. Its sound was so terrible, that when loudly blown, it put the giants to flight, who imagined it to be the roar of a mighty wild beast (Hyginus, Poet. astronom. ii. 23).

Tritons and winged hippocamps in the Trevi Fountain, Rome

According to Hesiod's Theogony, Triton dwelt with his parents in a golden palace in the depths of the sea. The story of the Argonauts places his home on the coast of Libya. When the Argo was driven ashore on the Lesser Syrtes, the crew carried the vessel to Lake Tritonis, whence Triton, the local deity, guided them across to the Mediterranean (Apollonius Rhodius iv. 1552).

Triton was the father of Pallas and foster parent to the goddess Athena. Triton also had a brother named Armanius, Poseidon's favorite son. Pallas was killed by Athena during a fight between the two goddesses. ^[1]. Triton is also sometimes cited as the father of Scylla by Lamia.

Triton also appeared in Roman myths and epics. In the Aeneid, Misenus, the trumpeter of Aeneas, challenged Triton to a contest of trumpeting. The god flung him into the sea for his arrogance.

Over time, Triton's name and image came to be associated with a class of merman-like creatures, the Tritons, which could be male or female, and usually formed the escort of marine divinities. Ordinary Tritons were described in detail by the geographer Pausanias (ix. 21). A variety of Triton, the Centauro-Triton or Ichthyocentaur ("Fish-centaur"), was described as having the forefeet of a horse in addition to the human body and the fish tail. It is probable that the idea of Triton owes its origin to the Phoenician fish-deities.

In Popular Culture

Triton is the common name given to a group of very large sea snails, predatory marine gastropods of the genus Charonia.  From ancient times, people of many different cultures have removed the tip of the shell, or drilled a hole in the tip, and then used the shell as a trumpet.

Among the things named after Triton include Triton, the largest moon of the planet Neptune. This name is symbolic, as Neptune is the Roman name for Triton's father.

Triton is also associated in industry with tough, hard wearing machines such as Ford's Triton Engines and Mitsubishi's Triton pickup trucks.

In the Disney film The Little Mermaid, Triton is the king of the deep sea. Ariel, the main protagonist of the story, is Triton's daughter.

Triton is also a character in the DC Comics books Wonder Woman and Aquaman.

Triton is a character in Marvel Comics, a member of the Inhuman royal family.

In the TV show Veronica Mars there is a secret order of Students named The Tritons after the Greek God.

Triton is the mascot for the University of California, at San Diego

Triton is also the mascot for the University Missouri at Saint Louis.

Hippocamp

The hippocamp or hippocampus (Greek: ἵπποκαμπος, from ἵππος, "horse" and κάμπος , "monster"^[1]), often called a sea-horse^[2] in English, is a mythological creature shared by Phoenician^[3] and Greek mythology, though the name by which we recognize it is purely Greek; it became part of Etruscan mythology. It has typically been depicted as a horse in its forepart with a coiling, scaly, fishlike hindquarter.

In mythology

Homer described Poseidon, who was god of horses (Poseidon Hippios) as well as of the sea, drawn by "brazen-hoofed" horses over the sea's surface, and Apollonius of Rhodes, being consciously archaic in Argonautica (iv.1353ff), describes the horse of Poseidon emerging from the sea and galloping away across the Libyan sands.^[4] In Hellenistic and Roman imagery, however, Poseidon (or Roman Neptune) often drives a sea-chariot drawn by hippocamps. Thus hippocamps sport with this god in both ancient depictions and much more modern ones, such as in the waters of the eighteenth-century Trevi Fountain in Rome surveyed by Neptune from his niche above. (illustration, left below)

The appearance of hippocamps in both freshwater and saltwater is counter-intuitive to a modern audience, though not to an ancient one. The Greek picture of the natural hydrological cycle did not take account of the condensation of atmospheric water as rain to replenish the water table, but imagined the refreshening of the waters of the sea oozing back landwards through vast underground caverns and aquifers, rising replenished and freshened in springs.^[5]

Thus it was natural for a temple at Helike in the coastal plain of Achaea to be dedicated to Poseidon Helikonios, (the Poseidon of Helicon), the sacred spring of Boeotian Helikon. ^[6] When an earthquake suddenly submerged the city, the temple's bronze Poseidon accompanied by hippocamps continued to snag fishermen's nets.^[7]

Likewise, the hippocamp was considered an appropriate decoration for mosaics in Roman thermae or public baths, as at Aquae Sulis modern day Bath in Britannia (illustration, below).

Hippocamp in Roman mosaic in the thermae at Aquae Sulis (Bath)

Poseidon's horses, which were included in the elaborate sculptural program of gilt-bronze and ivory, added by a Roman client to the temple of Poseidon at Corinth, are likely to have been hippocamps; the Romanized Greek Pausanias described the rich ensemble in the later second century CE (Geography of Greece ii.1.7-.8):

"Within the sanctuary of the god stand on the one side portrait statues of athletes who have won victories at the Isthmian games, on the other side pine trees growing in a row, the greater number of them rising up straight. On the temple, which is not very large, stand bronze Tritons. In the fore-temple are images, two of Poseidon, a third of Amphitrite, and a Sea, which also is of bronze. The offerings inside were dedicated in our time by Herodes Atticus, four horses, gilded except for the hoofs, which are of ivory, and two gold Tritons beside the horses, with the parts below the waist of ivory. On the car stand Amphitrite and Poseidon, and there is the boy Palaemon upright upon a dolphin. These too are made of ivory and gold. On the middle of the base on which the car is has been wrought a Sea holding up the young Aphrodite, and on either side are the nymphs called Nereids.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Arion on a Sea Horse (1855)

Hippocamps appear with the first Orientalizing phase of Etruscan civilization: they remain a theme in Etruscan tomb wall-paintings and reliefs, where they are sometimes provided with wings, as they are in the Trevi fountain. Katharine Shepard found in the theme an Etruscan belief in a sea-voyage to the other world^[8]

A sea-lion mosaic in the Baths of Neptune, Ostia Antica

Aside from aigikampoi, the fish-tailed goats representing Capricorn or Aegeus ("goat-man")^[9] other fish-tailed animals rarely appearing in Greek art but more characteristic of the Etruscans included leokampoi (fish-tailed lions), taurokampoi (fish-tailed bulls) or pardalokampoi (fish-tailed leopards).^[10]

The mythic hippocamp has been used as a heraldic charge, particularly since the Renaissance, most often in the armorial bearings of people and places with maritime associations. However, in a blazon, the terms hippocamp and hippocampus now refer to the real animal we call a seahorse, and the terms seahorse and sea-horse refer to the mythological creature. The above-mentioned fish hybrids are seen less frequently.^[11]

Nereids

In Greek mythology, the Nereids (neer'-ee-eds) are sea nymphs, the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris. They often accompany Poseidon and are always friendly and helpful towards sailors fighting perilous storms. They are particularly associated with the Aegean Sea, where they dwelt with their father in the depths within a silvery cave. The most notable of them are Thetis, wife of Peleus and mother of Achilles; Amphitrite, wife of Poseidon; and Galatea, love of the Cyclops Polyphemus.

In Iliad XVIII, when Thetis cries out in sympathy for the grief of Achilles for the slain Patroclus,

“There gathered round her every goddess, every Nereid that was in the deep salt sea. Glauce was there and Thaleia and Cymodoce; Nesaea, Speio, Thoe and ox-eyed Halie; Cymothoe, Actaee and Limnoreia; Melite, Iaera, Amphithoe and Agaue; Doto, Proto, Pherusa and Dynamene; Dexamene, Amphinome and Callianeira; Doris, Panope and far-sung Galatea; Nemertes, Apseudes and Callianassa. Clymene came too, with Ianeira, Ianassa, Maera, Oreithuia, Amatheia of the lovely locks, and other Nereids of the salt sea depths. The silvery cave was full of nymphs.”

In classical art they are frequently depicted riding an assortment of sea creatures — dolphins, sea monsters, and hippocampi.

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The above is adapted from Wikipedia online references and resources