Example 1
In 2014, the British government announced the construction of a new polar research vessel. The Brits have a long and illustrious legacy of exploration and have produced such pioneering luminaries as Shackleton, Cook, Drake and Stanley. This new icebreaking vessel was to represent the state of the art in modern arctic research ships. It was estimated to cost around 200 million pounds. At current conversion rates, that’s about $263 million.
So, great. The Limeys were going to make a cool new exploration ship. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the agency behind the enterprise, wanted to ensure that the British taxpaying public felt some personal connection to their not-insubstantial investment. As a result, they proposed a nationwide competition to determine the name of this amazing new machine. That was their first mistake.
The British have a storied history of cool ship names. A few examples include Battleaxe, Conqueror, Indefatigable, Implacable and Revenge. With a legacy like that, what could go wrong? Well, plenty, it seems.
When the final votes were tallied, the top five results were Boaty McBoatface, Poppy-Mai, Henry Worsley, David Attenborough, and It’s Bloody Cold Here. Boaty McBoatface actually took 33.16% of the overall vote, three times that of the next-closest challenger. Now, the NERC found itself in a quandary.
Boaty McBoatface received 124,109 votes. The people had spoken, and clearly. However, what they had spoken was pretty darn stupid. The NERC directors stepped in and made an executive decision to name the vessel the RRS Sir David Attenborough.
Sir David Attenborough is actually a pretty great guy. We all know him as the actor who played the billionaire grandfather/dinosaur enthusiast John Hammond in Jurassic Park. However, he is also an esteemed naturalist and champion of environmental causes in the real world, as well. Two of the other options were likewise laudable.
Poppy-Mai was a toddler who boldly faced incurable cancer. Henry Worsley was an Afghanistan war veteran who perished while attempting the first solo unaided crossing of the Antarctic in 2016. Any of those would obviously have been fine had the voting public seen fit to get with the program. As a consolation prize, however, the fun-loving folks at NERC did announce that one of Attenborough’s submersibles could indeed be named Boaty McBoatface. The actual voters, however, were having none of that.
A petition soon garnered some 3,800 signatures that demanded that Sir David Attenborough actually legally change his name to Sir Boaty McBoatface “in the interest of democracy.” A Spanish internet forum leveraged their platform to promote the choice of Blas de Lezo, a Spanish Navy officer who won the Battle of Cartagena de Indias against the English in 1741. This option garnered fully 38,000 votes before the frustrated NERC leadership pulled it from contention.
Nowadays, the RRS Sir David Attenborough boldly soldiers on pushing the boundaries of science. One of its cool little remotely-piloted submersibles does indeed have Boaty McBoatface stenciled across its side. I suppose it could have been worse. I was personally pulling for “It’s Bloody Cold Here.”
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