Only once before had we felt it necessary to rename a boat - our very first canal cruiser came with the singularly unattractive name of "Rex" which was promptly changed to "Rose of Farne" (for reasons I cannot recall all these years hence).
"Rose" was rapidly replaced by "Arcturus" with whom we had a ten year relationship and much enjoyable boating. Arcy was followed by "Badger", our 37' 1969 Springer narrowboat - a historic boat in her own right although many refused to acknowledge the fact.
We had been happy with the names on those boats when we (or to be more accurate, Glen) purchased them but now we owned "Anne of Arne" and felt the name had to go. Arne is, I discovered, an island on the South Coast and we planned to be based on the East Coast. "Anne" as a name held no specific appeal. It wasn't a bad name, it just did nothing for me. Jane couldn't really care less what the boat is called!
After many suggestions were put forward, some good, some bad, some frankly ridiculous, I settled on the name "Brigantia" for various reasons.
Firstly, and most importantly, I liked the sound of it. What better reason could there be? Equally importantly, the other owners and the rest of the crew pool had no objections.
Brigantia was the goddess of the Brigantes tribe who ruled over much of the North of what is now England in pre-Roman times. She is the Celtic goddess Brigit or Brighid, Brigantia is a Romanised version of her name.
Whilst my research into our family history has shown us to have a pretty mixed ancestry - Essex and Norfolk festuring heavily on my mothers side with a fairly recent Germanic line on my fathers side, some of our ancient ancestors were surely Brigantes and I have always, even though we moved away from the North East when I was just seven, felt a cultural and spritual link to the North East in general and County Durham in particular.
I also have pagan leanings although I am NOT, I hasten to add, a white sheet wearing modern "druid" or a nutcase "warlock" claiming to practice witchcraft. I mean no offence to people who fall into those categories, or follow one of the other branches of modern neo-paganism, but pu-lease! Paganism, to me, is about honouring my ancestors and acknowledging the part they played in making me, it is about understanding and being part of the environment, working with nature rather than against it and it is about law, respect, teaching, the arts and having a damn good party from time to time!
It is a little known fact, for example, that in pagan Britain before the arrival of the Romans, women, children and the elderly had rights and were looked after by society that they would not enjoy again until modern times. Few Britons were Druids in any case - the Druids were a class apart being priests, lawgivers, bards or healers depending on their speciality. The bards were especially important in a culture without the written word as they kept alive the folk memories of the people - something dear to my heart as a sometime folk singer/songwriter.
I digress however - finally I could only find a few boats with the name "Brigantia" already - a Bristol harbour ferry (!), a huge German registered yacht and a forty footer whereabouts unknown for many years. As the chances of finding a unique name for a yacht are all but nil (unless it is something truly esoteric) that seemed good enough.
Glen and I duly designed and Glen printed up some name panels on sticky vinyl which we hope will last out until we have the time and money to repaint the hull. These were applied at the last minute before she was launched as it didn't seem right for her to go into the water with the wrong name still on the boat.
We'd sort of planned a naming ceremony for the form of it but in the end it never happened. Not that I'm bothered, Dad once arrived on a ship in Glasgow docks and left 48 hours later on a ship with a different name run by a different shipping line. It was the same ship! Unbeknown to the benighted heathen down in the engine room, she'd been transferred from one shipping line with the Alfred Holt group to another and unceremoniously renamed to fit in with the naming policy of that shipping line.
