Into the Wardrobe

Now, I've always pronounced the name of Caspian's ship as Dawn Treader, ie, the way it's written. Today, a colleague told me that her husband (who is a bit of a sailing buff) says it should be pronounced 'trader'.

Any thoughts, anyone?

Were the ship a commercial trading vessel, then pronouncing it "Dawn Trader" might make sense. And the first time I saw the title, before I had ever read any of the Narnia books, I mistakenly saw "Voyage of the Dawn Trader". However, it is a ship built for exploration, not trade.

But once I took a closer look at the title I realized it was "Treader". I think I was about half way through the book by that point.

But then, the connection to the idea of "treading a path toward the dawn" was obvious.

Perhaps the aformentioned nautical buff does not know the meaning of the word, "treader"?

Perhaps there's a pun going on?

The crew are on a journey but since it's over the sea they can't 'tread' the path themselves, their ship has to. So, we have Dawn Treader for the reasons noted.

However, as a nautical term 'treader' isn't pronounced as you'd expect. Having said that, I've been through about 10 lists of nautical terms on the web (as well as a few normal on-line dictionaries) and haven't found 'treader' amongst them - so if it is a nautical term it must be fairly obscure. I'll check with the colleague, tomorrow.