Maybe it's a variation on famous "Как завещал товарищ Ленин." And to keep it recognizable, he kept the male verb.
Yup, female version would be Vernaya.
Everything is simpler. In Russian, the word "Ship" (Корабль) is a masculine gender. Therefore, any ship is He
Thus spoke comrade Verniy!
Due to Lussian Ranguage, "spoke" is written here with a male grammatical gender because "comrade" is masculine.It's a reference to Thus Spoke Zarathustra