One of the best lines attributed to, though not actually said by, Winston Churchill is, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” The line sprang to mind when The Scrapbook read of the plight of the U.K.’s new polar research vessel (presently referred to as NPRV), which risks being saddled with the moniker “Boaty McBoatface,” courtesy of an online poll.
A project of the Natural Environment Research Council, the $300 million state-of-the-art research vessel is set to be completed in 2019. It will be “the UK’s largest and most advanced research ship yet,” equipped to prowl Arctic and Antarctic waters, aiding in climate research. To mark the start of construction, NERC decided to invite the public to vote on name suggestions using the hashtag #NameOurShip.
To gauge from the suggested names, the British public does not share the scientific community’s enthusiasm for this latest bout of government spending. True, some 2,400 voted to name the vessel RRS Henry Worsley, after a British explorer who died in January attempting the first unaided solo crossing of the Antarctic. And RRS David Attenborough, after the celebrated British naturalist, also made the short list.
However, both were blown away by the flood of votes for RRS Boaty McBoatface, which garnered 124,000 votes, four times that of the next-closest contender. Perhaps it is time to reword the promotional heading on NERC’s “name our ship” website to “200 Million Pounds. 15,000 Tonnes. 129 Metres. 124,000 Votes. One name.”
During a BBC radio interview, two days after the online voting closed, science minister Jo Johnson was politic about the Internet’s choice, telling the host: “There is a process now for us to review all of the public’s choices. Many of them were imaginative, some were more suitable than others.”
He was more polite than The Scrapbook would have been and refrained from calling the suggested name inane or farcical. Instead, he suggested Boaty McBoatface was for some reason not “a name that fits the gravity and the importance of the subjects that this boat is going to be doing science into.”
Although the BBC host accused the government of riding “roughshod over democracy,” the final say rests with NERC.
