A Multi-Million Dollar Research Vessel Might Be Named ‘Boaty McBoatface’ Thanks To The Internet

Great Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) is planning a new £200 million polar research vessel set to sail the waters of Antarctica and the Arctic in 2019, carrying a team of 90 scientists and support staff. In a move that they somehow never saw going wrong, NERC decided to turn to the internet to decide on a name for the revolutionary ship.

On the NERC website, the organization writes that they’re looking for an “inspirational name for the ship that will exemplify the work it will do.” Suggestions include naming it after a historical figure, movement, landmark, or a famous polar explorer or scientist.

So of course the internet chose the name “Boaty McBoatface” — because sometimes we can have nice things — which was leading with 15,000 votes before the “Name Our Ship” website crashed, or was otherwise taken down. Despite the fact that the terms and conditions state that the final name will ultimately be selected by NERC, people are unsurprisingly pretty dead-set on Boaty McBoatface.

https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/711917745550528512

https://twitter.com/seelix/status/711931852416802816

The man who actually came up with the name, former BBC Radio Jersey presenter James Hand, said in a radio interview Monday that he wrote in his suggestion as a joke and feels just terrible about the whole thing now.

[protected-iframe id=”599605eaae4d7dfd0fc04088a8e49093-60970621-60765065″ info=”//players.brightcove.net/624246174001/82f79524-152c-485f-bcb0-09197a216c87_default/index.html?videoId=4810206702001″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=””]

(Via The Independent)