Just about anyone considering the question of what HM Government’s new polar research ship to be launched in 2019 should be named must have thought first that there must be something better than Boaty McBoatface, and second that there are a lot of comedians around…
Well we might have known that, I guesss, just from watching online coverage of Parliament…
Of course there are better choices. There is a move afoot calling for the ship to be named after HW (Bill) Tilman, accomplished high latitude sailor and explorer, mountaineer, war hero of both The Great War and World War II, and also a popular author.
He was a strange and complex character – I tend to think of him as an unreconstructed Edwardian gent who should have grown out of his attitude to women – but his achievements are not in any doubt. Read about him here and see his collected works published jointly by our friends at Lodestar Books and Verterbrate Publishing. Volumes 5 and 6 of the collection are now in press.
The voting website and the voting option for HW Tilman are now working again, so get please get voting – whoever your chosen polar explorer might be.
Well done Gavin, H.W.Tilman would be the perfect name!
Boaty McBoatface is a fine example of H L Mencken’s adage ‘Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard’. Sanity will prevail in the end let’s hope!