‘We never intended to change the name of the ship’Bristol Dockyards launch new museum and visitor attraction
The new ‘Bristol Dockyards’ museum and visitor attraction will launch this weekend, offering free admission to children and a completely transformed experience of Brunel’s most famous ship.
And the man in charge of that transformation has reassured the people of Bristol that, despite the controversy that sparked furious TV news hosts and diatribes in national newspapers, the SS Great Britain is still called the SS Great Britain.
But Tim Bryan, the project manager for the Dockyard Museum and Brunel curator, explained that the decision to rename the venue has more to do with a rebrand to take into account the plans for a second of Brunel’s ships to be recreated there.
The newly-refurbished and transformed Bristol Dockyards has its great launch this weekend, in time for the school holidays, and Bristol Live had a sneak preview of what’s in store.
Everything at the SS Great Britain has been re-imagined, but the ship itself is still very much the centre of attention.
Mr Bryan explained that visitors had often commented in the past that they wanted to know more about the people on board the ship as well as the ship itself.
“Our new exhibition is a real deep dive into life for people travelling on the ship, and the reasons why the ship went where it did,” he explained.
“We’re going to tell the story of all the different voyages that ship went on, right from its birth in Bristol, through Liverpool, New York, a little side trip to the Crimea, and then Australia and San Francisco.
“The idea is really to delve into those human stories. We’ve got Brunel’s engineering expertise here, but the idea we have is also to add to that and really bring that human element out
“So what was it like to be a passenger? What was it like to be a member of the crew? and to really give that feeling, so people can empathise with that.
“Why would you spend a couple of months travelling to Australia? And when you got there, what did you do?” he said.
“We’ve researched some new stories – we’ve got a brilliant group of community researchers who’ve discovered new things. We found out about an apprentice who worked in the dockyard here in 1839, he came down from Gloucestershire to work on the ship.
Bristol Dockyards project leader Tim Bryan, the curator of Brunel’s SS Great Britain museum(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach Plc)
“We didn’t know anything about that before. And then other stories of the crew and passengers from all manner of backgrounds,” he added.
“Bristol’s an incredibly diverse city, and I think the stories show how diverse the history of the ship was. But I think people, hopefully, will be really excited by that new human element,” he said.
“I think we’ve been able to really bring that out, so that when people get on the ship, they can see and understand what it was like, because the ship itself is a fantastic experience inside.
“It’s very immersive – there are not many museum labels telling you what you’re seeing. What we’re doing now is creating something that, when passengers get on the ship, they understand it even better. So we think it’s going to be a huge addition to the offer,” he explained.
The new name means a complete rebrand to ‘Bristol Dockyards’, and that will mean – eventually – that all the brown tourist signs directing drivers to the SS Great Britain will change too – but not on the ship itself.
(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach Plc)
“We never intended to change the name of the ship,” Mr Bryan said. “It is still the SS Great Britain. We’re called ‘Bristol Dockyards, home of the SS Great Britain’, so people don’t need to worry about us doing that. It’s such an iconic ship we would never have considered doing that,” he added.
A couple of years ago, the trust that run the ship and the museum and attraction announced ambitious £20 million plans to restore the Albion Dock next door, and recreate a replica of one of Brunel’s other iconic ships, the SS Great Western.
That’s the long-term goal, but is still many years and millions of pounds of fundraising away. “The trust looks after two dockyards,” explained Mr Bryan. “We have, obviously, the Great Western Dockyard and the Great Western Dock that the SS Great Britain sits in.
“Next door is the Albion Dockyard, which the trust, in the long term, is hoping to restore. We’re working with the Albion Dock Company – it is still a working dry dock – and that’s why it’s ‘Dockyards’ plural,” he added.
Mr Bryan called on families from across Bristol and the West of England, who perhaps hadn’t been to the SS Great Britain before, or hadn’t been for many years, to come and check out the new transformed Bristol Dockyards.
Children’s entry is currently free if booked online. “What with the free travel for kids on buses, I think it’s a really great opportunity for local people to come,” said Mr Bryan.
“One of the things that we want to do with this exhibition is really to try and connect with local people and show how the ship is really embedded in the history of the city.
“If you talk to people in the city, they’re very proud of the ship and the Suspension Bridge and all the Brunel connections, so it’s a brilliant opportunity to come down and see us again,” he added.