Boaty McBoatface is dead; long live Boaty McBoatface

This week, the British government disappointed its subjects (and the rest of us, watching from home by signalling it would overturn the results of an online poll that saw voters — around 125,000 of them — choose “Boaty McBoatface” as the name for a 300- million- pound British naval polar research vessel.

The public poll to name the new National Environment Research Council ship opened in March, and Boaty McBoatface — a name put forth by BBC radio host James Hand — quickly shot to the top of the rankings ( ironically, Hand voted to name the ship after Sir David Attenborough). The poll closed on April 17 with Boaty the clear winner, to t he near- i mmediate r esponse from the NERC that the name was, though creative, unlikely to stick.

The news ranks among the Internet’s great disappointments, from TV spoilers to election results to the cold, hard truth about how that viral video where a fireman rescues a tiny kitten really ends. But the death of Boaty McB is being framed by some in the British media as something altogether more sinister: an erosion of democracy.

There is a lot of hyperbole floating around the Internet in response to the rejection of a name that is essentially a written equivalent of a tongue planted in cheek.

The Telegraph, The Spectator and the Times of London have all published stories — each substituting bemusement for outrage to varying degrees — musing on how accurately reflective the British government’s desire to veto the result of the online poll is of the current state of democracy in Britain.

Meanwhile, an article on Atlantic. com raises the question of whether the government’s intentions are “actually a manifestation of the way democracy tends to work in practice,” which is to say it is mostly an illusion.

These are all i nteresting, compelling thoughts and ideas, but let’s not forget what’s at stake here: the name of a big, red boat.

Of course, sinking Boaty McBoatface isn’t really about democracy. What it is about is an erosion — or dismissal — of an altogether more im- portant fundamental British value: humour. After all, there are worse-named naval ships (the Cockchafer, for instance). And this is Britain, a country whose stiff-upper-lippedness is only matched by an inimitable propensity for wit that is at once bone-dry and utterly absurd. As the columnist Stuart Heritage wrote in an impassioned ( and, admittedly, somewhat satirical) piece in The Guardian, Boaty McBoatface is “a symbol of a small and very British rebellion.”

So, really, is there any better emblem of Great Britain than a naval ship christened Boaty McBoatface through a diplomatic process by subjects of the Empire?

British Science Minister Jo Johnson has said that, rather than Boaty McBoatface, the government would prefer for the ship a name that “lasts longer than a social media news cycle and reflects the serious nature of the science it will be doing.”

And in fact, the solution may be sitting right under everyone’s thumbed-up noses.

Photos of the as- yet- unnamed ship posted online show it with slightly too large, block- lettered placeholder text where its eventual name will appear; it’s suitably stuffy, perfectly perennial and if chosen as the boat’s moniker would serve as an absolute — albeit veiled — mockery of the whole imbroglio: NAME OF VESSELL.

LET’S NOT FORGET WHAT’S AT STAKE HERE: THE NAME OF A BIG, RED BOAT