Hacker News Reader

Comment by planetjones | Hacker News Reader

I think the name chosen is a good one and like David Attenborough himself, the boat's name will endure for a long time.

However, what did the organisation (NERC) expect when they gave a free choice for the names of the boat. They would have been far better having a poll of say 5 names which had been pre-selected.

View on HN

I'm not convinced on the choice of name; Sir David Attenborough has already received many honours and appears to have received this nomination because (1) he is famous as a broadcaster and (2) is popular as a person, seemingly being of a mild and pleasant character.

So they cleverly side-stepped the Boaty issue by picking a name to which people can't object without being accused of picking on a "nice" 90-year-old man. I don't think that's a good basis for a naming policy.

I'm sure there are many publicly-anonymous actual research scientists who could have received this honour instead and BIS / NERC could still have thrown the Boaty-as-ROV bone to the voters.

It really isn't that important.

To see your name on a large ship you need to be old. It's the sort of thing for people who are well into retirement, if not recently deceased. Pick someone younger and you may look foolish should they become involved in something later. Given the public nature of the naming, they also want to go with someone popular. So they want an older person, who the public knows, and that has a history of doing something for the environment. Nobody else covers those three areas like Attenborough.

> Pick someone younger and you may look foolish should they become involved in something later.

Old men develop new scandals. Joe Paterno. Bill Cosby. Various Catholic bishops and cardinals.

If you're worried about bad press, better pick people who have been dead for some time.

The dead aren't as popular. Most famous people die 10-20 years after the public stopped watching them. So it's hard to find someone dead but still currently famous. Attenborough is that rare breed of famous person who is still active and respected at 89. Kids and grandparents alike know his name. Even Cosby, with all his infamy, is not recognized by teenagers because he stepped off the main stage long ago.

You forget the biggest of those scandals, Jimmy Saville. His misdeeds weren't made public until after he passed away.

Chevron had a policy of naming ships after living executives - although it quietly renamed the Condoleeza Rice to something less political in 2001.

With respect to Attenborough, the RRS David Attenborough is a very unexciting choice and isn't going to do anything at all to raise the profile of environmental research.

Can't say I'm opposed to Chevron's idea here. I'm sure headlines like "Chevron CEO hits reef, spilling millions of crude and killing thousands of seals" might make them take safety a (tiny) bit more seriously. Nothing good happens with oil tankers etc.

That does sound like something an oil company would do. It seems like horrible internal pr. Employees, the people who work on the ship, might not appreciate it being named after the boss. I'd have gone with the names of lifelong or heroic employees.

Purpose of ship is to research and bring awareness to the public. Attenborough did that - the awareness part that is.

Seems fitting.

They tried doing the same thing here with a replacement bridge. They didn't like the old name for historical/political reasons and tried to change it to a national hero name to make this clusterfuck of a project more inticing. The backlash was infinite and they backed down. Oh and they didn't get reelected for other various reasons.

They totally picked the new name because it would soften the blow, he's a national treasure after all.

You could argue that the purpose of the public poll wasn't really to name a ship but to raise awareness of NERC which it did in spades.

They didn't know the poll would leak out to the general public. Also they didn't say the winner necessarily will be chosen, they chose 4th place, and the name they thought was the most fitting, which is completely reasonable.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Let me direct your attention to the new soft drink: Hitler did nothing wrong. 4chan has been around for a while now.

Indeed. TBH they were incredibly lucky to land an inoffensive name that sounded fun, and should have made the best of it. Alas, British upper class is not exactly the most dynamic bunch...

FTA:

  But why couldn't the main vessel itself have carried the name?
  Here's one reason: imagine the ship were to get into trouble at some point in the future.
  Imagine the headlines.
  Remember, the places it will work are extremely hostile; they are dangerous.

I can sort of see the reasoning there. “4 dead after Boaty McBoatface sinks” would be a difficult headline to take seriously.

Vs "Four dead after Sir David Attenborough Sinks?"

"Sir David Attenborough lost with all hands."

Boaty McBoatface was an awesome name. Such a missed opportunity...

If that is a serious concern then any kind of name outside of a serial number could look bad in a headline. "Attenborough caught dumping diesel, killing baby seals".

Another beautiful misdirect from the science correspondents :-) One might reasonably argue that the onus would be on the headline writers there to lend the appropriate gravitas.

On the other hand ... there'd still be more publicity for the research programme. How much coverage was there for the prosaically named Ocean Researcher V when it sank, resulting in death of two researchers?

"Four dead after British research ships sinks"?

-For that exact reason, Churchill instructed the SOE (Or, more probably, the armed forces in general, but it has been a while since I came across this anecdote) that whimsy or plain silly codenames for operations were OUT.

He didn't want any widows to receive a letter stating that 'It is with utmost regret we inform you that your husband died heroically for the Empire during the execution of operation PINK UNDIES' or something of the sort.

Makes a lot of sense.

You'll never be able to please everybody, just look at the WMO and their tropical storm naming methodology. I've actually heard someone complain about a perceived bias in the ethnicity of the names. You wouldn't even be able to use a true random number, because of tetraphobia [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia

I'm surprised that they made no mention of Mister Splashy Pants [0]. Greenpeace went through the exact same thing, but stuck with the funny name - which turned out to be a really good move.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Splashy_Pants

Regarding the good move, from the wikipedia article linked above:

After their initial reluctance Greenpeace embraced the result of the popular vote and used the name at the center of its campaign. The added publicity, at no cost to Greenpeace, gave it enough impact to convince the Japanese government, and the plan to hunt Humpback whales was abandoned in December 2007

Now that is a great result.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com