The historic steamship that once symbolised Victorian Britain's industrial might has been renamed amid fears its name was putting off visitors. Brunel's SS Great Britain, a museum in Bristol since 2005, will now be known as the Bristol Dockyards — with references to the ship and its designer removed from the attraction's name.
The rebrand comes after a 37 per cent drop in visitors since the Covid-19 pandemic and a public consultation that revealed many local people believed "SS" stood for "slave ship" rather than "steam ship". The ship was recovered in 1970 and has been docked close to the site where crowds dumped the statue of Edward Colston during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
“Brunel's SS Great Britain museum rebrands as 'Bristol Dockyards' after 37% visitor drop and concerns 'SS' implied 'slave ship'.”
Andrew Edwards, chief executive of Bristol Dockyards and the SS Great Britain Trust, said the site would present itself as a "cool" attraction that properly reflected the diversity of Bristolians. "We are committed to safeguarding this extraordinary heritage while being ambitious about what it can become: a dynamic cultural campus rooted in community participation, learning and maritime heritage," he said.
The rebrand is part of a planned £20m redevelopment of the overall historic dockyard site. Early development proposals stressed the need to make the site appeal to an increasingly diverse local population, and the business case stated: "A major priority for the trust is to increase the ethnic diversity of its visitors through this project." The plan urged a "review of the overall brand and marketing proposition" to move "beyond SS Great Britain (the attraction's name) and indeed 'beyond Brunel'."
Rather than focus on the ship's pioneering iron hull and screw propeller — innovations that made it the first ocean liner when launched in 1843 — the museum will now use the SS Great Britain as a means of telling stories about global trade and migration. These will include a Jamaican cook and a Barbadian singer who travelled on the ship, as well as its use to transport troops to suppress the Indian Mutiny of 1857, providing material relevant to the South Asian community in Bristol.
James Boyd, director of the Brunel Institute, which offered its collection of research, said: "By working closely with communities across the city, weʼve been able to bring new perspectives, previously unheard voices and newly discovered histories into the heart of the museum."