RRS Boaty McBoatface: Name Sought for New UK Polar Ship
By Aiswarya Lakshmi
Sunday, March 20, 2016
The public are being asked to name the UK’s new polar research ship. The current front-runner for the vessel's name is already gathering a lot of attention: RRS Boaty McBoatface.
An open vote has been set up to name the next Royal Research Ship (RRS), with the public allowed to come up and vote for new names of the vessel.
The £200m, 15,000-tonne, 128m-long vessel is being built at Cammell Laird on Merseyside, and is due to become operational in 2019 to explore the Arctic and Antarctic.
The new ship will replace the existing RRS James Clark Ross and RRS Ernest Shackleton, which work in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Anyone can propose a suitable name on the website and other ideas in the running are RRS Usain Boat, RRS Ice Ice Baby and RRS Boatimus Prime.
The chosen name doesn’t have to be that of a famous polar scientist; it could just as easily be the name of a place or phenomenon.