Survived the attack on Pearl Harbour, then sunk by the British…
R.S.S. My Other Boat is Also a Ship
Flotationally,
the OtherMichael
11 Likes
RRS If You Think This Ship is Icy, You Should See My Wife?
4 Likes
Isn’t “Mc” more of an Irish surname?
Shouldn’t it be Boaty MacBoatface of clan Boatface?
Yours until the icecaps melt,
the OtherMichael
1 Like
What was tragic about the Belgrano incident was that the British sub had a very old design of torpedo on board which meant that, though the captain probably meant only to try to disable the steering gear, he sank the ship. The failure to develop a modern, accurate torpedo was one of the scandals covered up by the government of the time; billions were wasted on poorly managed development.
But the answer to the other question is this; it was a d____d close run thing, as Wellington said of Waterloo. You don’t have to take my word for it as an anonymous poster on the Internet, but I had it from a pretty good authority as I was working in military R&D at the time. The Falklands revealed major weaknesses in all three armed forces, and even bigger weaknesses in political leadership. The situation was retrieved mainly by older, more experienced soldiers and sailors.
3 Likes
Good luck with hitting a helicopter with a torpedo. Also, this is a research vessel, and unless someone decides to try and economise by combining it with Trident, it lacks torpedo tubes.
200 MEGAPOUNDS Sterling?
1 Like
More like the NARC, amirite?
1 Like
Some of the runner-up names were better:
RRS Usain Boat
RRS Ice Ice Baby
RRS Boat Marley and the Whalers
RRS I Like Big Boats & I Cannot Lie
RRS Pee-Eee Cee Tee
RRS Motörboat
RRS Feed
RRS Icey Smashy-Smash
RRS Thanks for All the Fish
7 Likes
Now this may be Oirish blarney because I had it of an Irishman…
Mc and Mac are both abbreviations of meic or maicc (son of) and occur equally in Scots and Irish - there is no distinction between them.
But O’ is distinctively Irish - it means “descendant of”, thus O’Bradaigh is a descendant of Bradaigh, O’Neill is a descendant of Neill or Niall. Mc or Mac have lost their original connotations and now just form part of names which don’t change from generation to generation.
Russian still preserves the ancient system (as does Icelandic) in which your second name is your father’s name with a suffix - hence Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin - but Irish and Scots have ceased to follow it.
In Yeats’s Wandering of Oisin, none of the heroes have O’ or Mc names because they are the original Fenians - people would claim to be their descendants - though Finn is usually referred to elsewhere as Fionn mac Cumhaill.
3 Likes
Don’t get yer Irish up! I’ll shape up, or ship out.
1 Like
Not forgetting RRS Putin, Russia’s Greatest Love Machine
7 Likes
Boaty McBoatface is a SHIP! The brits dont know a boat from a SHIP! At the very least it should have been Shippy McShipface ! Wanna do over ?
1 Like
Needs a “the Third” at the end.
2 Likes
No, that’s US-speak. A country that severed its connection with a monarchy but goes in for monarchical CEOs with monarchical titles. No British aristocrat would ever deign to have something as lowly as a number in his name.
1 Like
Somehow, “Shippy McShipface” manages to sound even stupider than the original suggestion. Fascinating.
2 Likes
my history teacher got mad at me because I called all the French Louis’ only by the number. “14 built Versailles, 16 was guillotined in the revolution”
4 Likes
It’s like the old school trick question, “Name 16 French kings”.
3 Likes
In the UK we don’t tend to name kids after their parents because how bloody self-obsessed are those people anyway?
Names might be re-used after a couple of generations, or as a middle name, but the idea of calling your kid “Joe Bloggs the second” is very, well, American.
7 Likes
It is certainly over 72ft LWL and not a submarine, so it is a ship. But boats include ships, which is more of a courtesy title. Nuclear submarines are ships, others are boats.
[edit - LWL not LOL of course. That’s what happens when you type with both hands and have a keyboard accident.]
1 Like
