Bristol’s shipyard museum, formerly known as ‘Brunel’s SS Great Britain’, has had its name replaced with the enticing sounding ‘Bristol Dockyards’ as part of a redevelopment programme, according to the Telegraph:
The attraction, previously called Brunel’s SS Great Britain, has been renamed the ‘Bristol Dockyards’, with references to the ‘SS Great Britain’ and its Victorian designer removed.
The ship, which was recovered [from the Falkland Islands] in 1970, has served as a museum in Bristol since 2005, close to the site where crowds dumped the statue of Edward Colston during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
In typical Brunel fashion, the SS Great Britain combined a number of innovative features, including an iron hull and screw propeller, making it a pioneer ocean liner when it was first launched in 1843.
Early development proposals for the site stressed the need to make the site appeal to an increasingly diverse local population, and the business case for the plan stated: “A major priority for the trust is to increase the ethnic diversity of its visitors through this project.”
There were plans to include “new perspectives and developing connections of historic migration with contemporary experiences”.
In the same document, it was advised that the name ‘SS Great Britain’ should be dropped.
Apparently, many local people turned out to believe ‘SS’ stood for ‘slave ship’, but rather than inform them of the correct expansion, the museum decided it would be better to drop it. Lucky the SS Great Eastern is no longer with us, for think how many slaves that ship must have carried!
The site, which is soon to reopen, will use the SS Great Britain as a means of telling stories about global trade and migration, including a Jamaican cook and a Barbadian singer who travelled on the ship.
It will also use the fact that the ship was used to transport troops to suppress the Indian Mutiny of 1857 as a basis for including more material relevant to the South Asian community in Bristol.
The SS Great Britain was built in 1845, 12 years after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 which ended slavery in the British Empire and itself came 26 years after the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which ended the transatlantic slave trade in British ships. It held the record for the largest passenger ship in the world for eight years and plied the transatlantic trade. The ship subsequently carried thousands of emigrants to Australia for nearly 30 years before being taken to the Falkland Islands and eventually abandoned in 1933. It was rescued and taken to Bristol in 1970 for restoration where it resides in the dock where it was built.
One wonders what the fate of Brunel University in London and the Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe will be, to say nothing of Great Britain itself.
In 1984, George Orwell wrote:
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.
The Telegraph’s story is worth reading in full.
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Bristol is a basket case.
Be kind make the non endemics feel safe. This is the endemics integrating with those most recently here. Not the other way round.
You mean to say that the “Battle of Britain” wasn’t fought using black or gay fighter pilots??,…….Who knew 🤔
“Early development proposals for the site stressed the need to make the site appeal to an increasingly diverse local population…”
Why? I did not aquire my modest general knowledge because the subjects were made more ‘appealing’. I was and am inquisitive. But that must be a white thing?
What a fascinating leaflet. Am I allowed to say that I think most of it is a good thing?
I will write to Reform asking that in government they instruct the Charities Commission to investigate the legality of the antics all sorts of Trustees get up to.
Maybe the left can explain why Britain invented so many things and everywhere else didn’t
White privilege obviously. Although it is ok to be White.
OK to be white – as long as we feel suitably guilty, of course.
A genetic advantage at our latitude, which means that the selfish gene is unfair and should be abolished.
The Leftwaffe is rarely able to explain anything.
I think the madleft explain our inventiveness by claiming we stole everything …
In which case how did we get so powerful that we were able to steal so many ideas and make them work?
They deal with awkward points by not dealing with them. The usual method is to scream “racist” at the person who poses the awkward points.
They missed a trick really, Brunel himself was of immigrant stock (Huegenot) but I suppose being white, that wouldn’t count.
Oh! I thought SS stood for Schutzstaffel (Protection squadron – started as Hitler’s body guard.)
“Early development proposals for the site stressed the need to make the site appeal to an increasingly diverse local population…”
Doesn’t the local population live in Great Britain – has Bristol et environs been cast-off into the Celtic Sea?
…many local people turned out to believe ‘SS’ stood for ‘slave ship’…
Ha. Idiots. Everyone knows SS stands for Schutzstaffel, (Except I’ll bet they don’t and could not name it and just think of it as ‘something to do with the Nazis’.)
SS Great Britain was of course a Steam Ship or Screw Steamer (oo-er).
I heard that they were originally going to give the ship a more “inclusive” (i.e. anti-white and anglophobic) name, and that someone suggested SS Beheader. But apparently wiser counsels prevailed …
A friend involved with a small aircraft museum nearby was talking about a Fiesler Storch which was being given away, they contacted the Imperial War Museum Duxford and asked if they where interested, they literally asked “was it flown by any black or gay people” answer “nope” reply “not interested”
They missed a trick there: It was a plane flown by pilots who had to hide their gayness under threat of persecution by the Nazis.
No way. No effing way. That didn’t happen, surely??
Did our military historically keep records of the numbers of blacks and days who used military equipment? How about disabled users? Or transgender? Or gingers?