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@hugo7
To my knowledge sea vessels are the only gendered nouns in English. I am not aware of any modern Romance* languages that don't have gendered nouns.
Interestingly though in French ships, boats, etc. are male. Spainish it depends. And Google says they are neuter in German and Dutch. So it's not obvious where the convention comes from but it probably predates English.
*quick Google says ~25% of languages have gendered categories for nouns