Surely, this can’t be true, I thought when first confronted with this headline and a photograph of Brunel’s famous ship S S Great Britain. What in hells name is wrong with the name it was given in the first place I thought, for not only is it considered considerably bad luck to change the name of a ship but I can see no justifiable reason for doing so.

I was going to mention the unfortunate renaming of the American ship USS Phoenix, one of the few ships to survive the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in world war two which was later sold to the Argentinian navy and renamed ARA General Belgrano, later sunk by the British submarine HMS Conqueror in the Falklands war of 1982.

However, I’m delighted to report, it is not the name of the famous ship which is being changed but the name of the dockyard in an attempt to reflect the diverse comunity of the Bristol area according to Andrew Edwards the chief executive of the SS Great Britain Trust, although he did admit that the rebrand would be seen as woke. Fancy that!

The dockyard was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and has housed the SS Great Britain for over a decade and will be rebranded as the Bristol Dockyards and will now focus more closely on the role the SS Great Britain played in the British Empire, saying the dockyard was determined to become more cool!

Apparently, the museum will not fucus on the engineering of the ship but will focus on telling the story of the people of the very diverse city of Bristol and the impact the immigrants carried on the ship had on the indigenous people of Australia, featuring research conducted by community groups into the diverse people who have been a part of the ships history. People included will be George Moses, a Jamaican ships cook and Bardadian muscian and poet James W Jones together with the Johnson shipbuilding family who travelled from the Wye Valley to work on the massive ship.

I believe the last sentence of the article is a direct quote, one has to admit it sounds like one to me so I have included it here for examination. The renaming and museum reopening is part of a wider initiative to transform the historical site into a “cultural campus” tackling issues around heritage, sustainability and diversity, ahead of the 60th anniversary of the ship’s return to Bristol in 2030.

I have to say in this day and age I’m not altogether surprised at the way modern people attack the problem of running a historical shipyard containing a superb and important ship in the history of the British nation and have to wonder why the shipyard should need to change its name, nor why it should wish to be cool! Whilst I appreciate it is quite interesting to know that a Jamaican cook, an obscure Barbadian poet both travelled on the ship and a family from the Wye Valley took part in the construction of the ship I’m not entirely certain what might be added to a visit to the dockyard from research from a community group. Now, I know I am a tad old fahioned here but I have to wonder what percentage of people who visit the SS Great Britain will appreciate the cultural campus with all the added diversity entailed within, or will the majority still just stand in wonderment at the superb engineering involved in the construction of Brunel’s amazing ship.