A ship? The Columbia River in Oregon? Good Question. I don't think I have ever known anymore than the opening line which I would bellow happily as a child from the top of trees.

Columbia was another name for The United States....from, of course Christopher Columbus. Think of the tune "Hail Columbia" and the figure of Columbia oftem found of coins.
We are singing a some about the US and their naval prowess!
Linda C

In Washington D.C. is'nt the C. for Columbia? Maybe a throwback to the US being Columbia.

Gandle,no one really knows. There is still a controversy as to whether we stole this song from "Brittania,Pride Of The Ocean," a poem which was published a year before Columbia,Gem Of The Ocean came out. Gem of the ocean obviously refers to an island and we certainly aren't that. Here are the words to the two pieces and you can see they are so alike it could hardly be called a coincidence. The man who wrote our version claimed his was plagurized but it's been documented that the British poem was written a year before.

1842...Brittania,Pride Of The Ocean

Britannia, the pride of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of the sailor's devotion,
No land can compare to thee.
Thy mandates make heroes assemble
With Victory's bright laurels in view;
Thy banners make tyranny tremble
When borne by the red, white, and blue.

1843..Columbia Gem Of The Ocean

O, Columbia! the gem of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of each patriot's devotion,
A world offers homage to thee.
Thy mandates make heroes assemble
When Liberty's form stands in view;
Thy banners make tyranny tremble
When borne by the Red, White and Blue!

The D.C. in the name of our nation's capital definitely stands for "District of Columbia." And I'm pretty sure that the CBS network's initials stand for "Columbian Broadcasting System."

Uhm, it's not the first song or lyrics we swiped from England. I heard an American whispering to a friend at a fireworks display in Glastonbury, England their astonishment at the Orchestra playing "My Country Tis of Thee" only to hear the crowd stand up, and burst out in song "God Save the Queen". roflmao.

Yes. And then of course there's Land of Hope and Glory, with the immortal line that "Britons never, never, never Shall be Slaves", also known as Rule Britannia, and also Elgar's Pomp & Circumstance March No. 1, which is played at US Graduation ceremonies.

I burst into giggles at the first graduation I attended, enchanted with the idea that they were playing the most jingoistic of British songs, sung out at every Last Night of the Proms.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, lots of places got 'poetic' names drawn from classical literature. Those names were often depicted as a person - usually a female - personifying the nation concerned. Thus, Britannia was depicted on the back of a British penny for years. Hibernia represented Scotland (or the Irish, depending on your perspective), Columbia the US - think of the movie company's logo of the woman with the torch. That's Columbia.

They redid the woman with the torch and used a new model...Annette Benning..just a couple of years ago. It's weird looking at Lady Columbia and recognizing her.

I'm wrong wrong wrong. Even though she looks a lot like Annette Bening,I checked back for the date to satisfy my own curiosity and ran across a site which said this rumor has been around for years and it wasn't Annette at all.