Sex differentiation in English

I have recently had a chat with a friend who has been studying French for a while. It seems to me that sex differentiation of things in French is a nightmare for any non native speakers. I wonder if it also occurs in English and find myself surprised that it does exist.
When we talk about the Earth and the universe, we call them "mother/she/her" and "father/he/him", respectively.
A boat is usually regarded as womanlike thing. Following is an extract about Titanic from Wikipedia.
In her time, Titanic surpassed all rivals in luxury and opulence. She offered an on-board swimming pool, a gymnasium, a Turkish bath, libraries in both the first and second-class, and a squash court.[2] First-class common rooms were adorned with elaborate wood panelling, expensive furniture and other decorations.[3] In addition, the Café Parisien offered cuisine for the first-class passengers, with a sunlit veranda fitted with trellis decorations.[4]

The ship incorporated technologically advanced features for the period. She had an extensive electrical subsystem with steam-powered generators and ship-wide electrical wiring feeding electric lights. She also boasted two wireless Marconi sets, including a powerful 1,500-watt radio manned by operators who worked in shifts, allowing constant contact and the transmission of many passenger messages.[5]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic

I decide to make it a topic here so that we can discuss and learn more this aspect of English. If you know and have more examples, please feel free to share with others.

he he about French , Sex diiferentiation is not only a big problem to non-native speakers aslo to native speakers.
Actually, as i know there is sex differentiation in Eng , but not many.
Besides, what u told, we also call nature" she/her" and sometimes a car can be "female"

i've just known two more cases of sex differentiation.
1) when u wanna shake sb's hand, u say "put her there".In this case, "her" implies "hand".
2)When a women's pregnant but we haven't known the gender of the foetus, we can use "he/him" talking about that one

Last night, I watched the movie "Event Horizon", which is the name of a spaceship. During the conversation among a group of crews, they use "her" whenever mentioning the Event Horizon. Then what came up to my mind is, perhaps native speakers consider anything which is beautiful, admirable (appearance) as female?