As the massive hull of RRS Sir David Attenborough – the ship the public wanted to be called Boaty McBoatface – slid into the River Mersey on Saturday, British Antarctic Survey director Jane Francis was still defending its name.
“This is a serious science ship that required the name of a serious scientist,” she said. “Its name recognises all the love and esteem the British public holds for Sir David Attenborough.”
But she admitted that the furore around the name has helped to generate interest in the £200m ship and to publicise the survey’s mission to investigate whether warm waters are melting the glaciers and ice shelves of the Antarctic from below.
“It’s given our mission a more human face,” she said.
Attenborough himself launched the vessel into a wet dock on the Mersey in Birkenhead on Saturday. He and Dame Francis pressed a button and the ship made its way into the water without a hitch as the crowd cheered and a band played God Save the Queen.
The 92-year-old broadcaster described the decision to name the ship after him as the “greatest of honours”.
Work will now begin attaching its top decks to its 129-metre (423ft), 10,000-tonne hull using huge cranes. The vessel will be formally named in a champagne ceremony at some point in November, before it sets sail for the Arctic with a crew of 30, plus 60 scientists and support staff onboard.
Once there, the strength of the ship’s hull will be tested to make sure it can cope with ice that has had more than a year to thicken.
If all goes to plan, in 2020 it will make its way towards Antarctica, where scientists hope to make use of the ship’s unique “moon pool”, a 4 sq metre vertical shaft that goes right through the ship. It will enable, for the first time, British Antarctic Survey scientists to access the open ocean even when the ship is surrounded by ice-covered water. “The ship will go into the ice and break it up, allowing us to access much more remote, ice-covered areas.”
Onboard will be a yellow submarine that is called Boaty McBoatface, which can be plunged to depths as far as 4,000 metres (13,000ft) to obtain information about the temperature and salinity of the ocean, as well as water flow speed, turbulence and fast-flowing currents.
“Where the water is flowing is really important,” said Francis. “What happens in the polar region has an impact on the whole of the planet.”
The name Boaty McBoatface was originally chosen for the ship in a public poll, but the choice was overruled in favour of honouring Attenborough.
