Iconic Bristol shipyard REMOVES Great Britain from name to 'represent diversity'

An iconic Bristol shipyard has removed Great Britain from its name in an effort to "represent diversity".

The dockland site in Bristol - designed by legendary engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel - had housed ocean liner SS Great Britain and for more than a decade was promoted as "Brunel's SS Great Britain".

But now both Great Britain and the name of the Victorian engineer behind the Great Western Railway and the largest steamships in the world will be removed, with the site rebranded as the Bristol Dockyards.

Andrew Edwards, the chief executive of the SS Great Britain Trust, admitted the rebrand would be received as "woke".

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But under his watch, the site will focus more closely on the role the SS Great Britain played in the British Empire and will look to spark "conversations" about topics like migration.

Mr Edwards told The Guardian: "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."

He said the dockyards were determined to become more "cool" and reflect Bristol, a Green council-run hotbed of music, festivals and left-wing activism.

Mr Edwards said the "SS" in the ship's name did not stand for "slave ship", as is often believed, and instead was short for "steamship".

The name has been announced ahead of the Bristol Dockyard's July opening of its expanded and revamped museum.

The museum will not focus as much on the engineering triumph of the SS Great Britain, instead focusing on telling the stores of the people in Bristol and across the world that the vessel helped shape.

Highlights of the museum revamp, which aims to represent the "very diverse city", include the impact of the ship on indigenous Australians - SS Great Britain made 32 round-trips between Britain and Melbourne.

The museum will also feature research conducted by "community groups" into the "diverse people" who have been part of the ship's history.

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These include George Moses, a Jamaican ship's cook, and Barbadian musician and poet James W Jones, who travelled on the ship from Melbourne to Liverpool via Sydney.

SS Great Britain's role in global conflict will be examined in the museum's expansion, including carrying British soldiers to Mumbai to quash the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Mr Edwards said: "I believe the role of organisations like us is to represent that diversity as best we can and to be able to provide a little bit of something that appeals to everybody, whoever they are and wherever they've come from."

It will also showcase the details of people from southwest England, such as the Johnson shipbuilding family - five brothers who travelled from the Wye Valley to work on the 322-foot ship.

Mr Edwards said: "As a world, we're dealing with lots of big issues. We are also about people movement. We're about how the oceans connect us all.

"It strikes me that one of the joys of running this sort of organisation is that we can provide a place where you can have those conversations."

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.

The site will still be described as the "home" of the SS Great Britain, Mr Edwards said.

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