The short answer is someone designed it specifically to demonstrate calibration across different printing conditions and it took off in no small part because it's cute and can serve as a filament sample.
This. If you really know the tugboat, you know almost every detail is a test of some sort. Many people don't even know that 2 fit together perfectly(flip one upside down and rotate 180° - the smoke stacks fit into the box behind the cabin and they interlock)
I think it's because Benchy has a crazy amount of changing surfaces and is easily printable with or without supports, scales better, and doesn't take terribly long to print.