HERE COMES BOATY
MCBOATFACE!
Here’s what happened when the British government let the internet name a $287 million polar research ship.
SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA
In March 2016, England’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) launched a competition to name the new Royal Research Ship (RRS) that was scheduled to set sail in 2019. The bright red, 15,000-ton, 423-foot-long vessel includes a helipad, a crane, and onboard labs. It has the ability to deploy subs and can host as many as 90 research scientists who will study ice sheets, ocean currents, and marine life. In the name-that-ship competition, NERC said it was looking for “something inspirational” that would exemplify the magnitude of the ship’s work.
The British, who are known for their dry, absurd, Monty Pythonesque sense of humor, immediately submitted inspirational names like What Iceberg? and It’s Bloody Cold Here. One submission, Clifford the Big Red Boat, inspired BBC presenter James Hand to toss his idea for a name into the ring: Boaty McBoatface. His submission immediately went viral and within 48 hours it received 8,000 votes and crashed the NERC website.
VOTES ARE IN
Though more inspirational suggestions—such as RRS Henry Worsley, after the explorer who died trying to cross Antarctica alone, and RRS Poppy-Mai, after a brave young girl who died from a rare form of brain cancer—received quite a few votes (15,231and 34,371), Boaty McBoatface was the absolute favorite with 124,109 votes.
AND THE WINNER IS
Much to the dismay of the voting public, Science Minister Jo Johnson said it would be inappropriate to give a joke label to the ship. “Its title should fit the mission and capture the spirit of public endeavor,” he said. Johnson reminded voters that NERC had reserved the right in the competition rules to have the final say on the name. So the polar research ship was named RRS Sir David Attenborough in tribute to the great broadcaster and natural scientist. Some Brits suggested that in the interest of democracy and humor, Sir David should change his name to Sir Boaty McBoatface… but no such luck.
NO, THEY’RE NOT
“We are excited to hear what the public has to suggest and we really are open to ideas.”
—NERC official
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the vote, took 42 years to ratify (1878–1920).
The joke would not die.
•One month after the Boaty vote, Google released a natural language parser that they called Parsey McParseface.
•That August, the Cartoon Network’s series The Regular Show broadcast an episode titled “Spacey McSpace Tree.”
•A character on BBC Three’s popular online series Pls Like was named Vloggy McVlogface.
•Later that year, a new salt-spreading truck in the UK was named Salty McSaltface.
•Sweden’s Stockholm-Gothenburg rail line named one of their engines Trainy McTrainface.
•A new ferry in Sydney, Australia, was dubbed Ferry McFerryface.
•The first Humboldt penguin to hatch in the UK’s Sea Life Sanctuary was named Fluffy McFluffyface.
•And as a consolation prize for NERC voters, the yellow submarine on the RRS Sir David Attenborough was named Boaty McBoatface.
TWO TERRIBLE TYPOS
A special Google home page banner replaced the second “g” with a g-shaped strawberry, but the typesetter deleted the “l” as well and forgot to put it back, so for an entire day Google’s home page said:
Googe
Fact 1: The 2018 Winter Olympics were held in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Fact 2: P. F. Chang’s is an Asian-inspired restaurant chain with more than 200 U.S. locations. Those two facts collided in the Olympics logo that Chicago’s WLS News displayed on its screen during a story about the PyeongChang games:
P.F. Chang 2018
Dam! North American beavers used to be as big as bears.