I recently visited the museum ship SS Great Britain, in Bristol, UK. When she was launched in 1843, the iron-hulled luxury passenger steamship SS Great Britain was described as “the greatest experiment since the Creation.”
At 322 feet long, she was the largest ship of her day. She was so large that it took a year to get her out of Bristol Harbor, requiring both dredging and the partial dismantling of a lock. She was powered by 1,000 HP steam engines, the largest engines of any ship in her day. Rather than turning paddle wheels, the engines turned a screw propeller. Great Britain‘s main propeller shaft, built by the Mersey Iron Works, was the largest single piece of machinery ever fabricated. She also had six masts, to carry sails when the winds were favorable and/or when the engines broke down or the propeller’s blades fell off as they did on the second voyage.
The single most remarkable thing about SS Great Britain is simply that she survived. She continued earning her living for close to a full century. She operated for only about a year in her intended service, as a luxury passenger liner between Bristol and New York. She was run hard aground off the coast of Ireland in 1846 due to a navigational error and was refloated in 1847.
In 1848, she was sold, refurbished and put into the Australian immigrant trade. Because the distance between Great Britain and Australia was too far for her supply of coal, she changed from being a sail-assisted steamship to becoming a steam auxiliary sailing ship. After almost 30 years in the Australian emigrant trade, her engines were removed and she became a pure sailing ship, a windjammer, carrying coal. In 1886 after a cargo fire aboard, Great Britain was condemned in the Falklands and sold as a coal barge. In 1937, she was scuttled and abandoned and remained so until in 1970 when she was carried back to Bristol on a barge to begin her restoration and a new life as a museum ship.
The 19th century: what a great time to be an engineer! Brunel was like 5-in-1.
Love your blog – lots of great content…
BTW, for folks who’re interested in the era of Brunel and also clever and somewhat plausible alternative history solidly rooted in historical facts, Gibson and Sterling’s “The Difference Engine” will likely provide some nice hours of reading.
Babbage overcomes machining difficulties to actualize his computer, Brunel and others benefit from the computational techniques this makes possible, interesting things happen in labor politics and other social arenas as a result. Beautifully realized (and don’t let the later and lesser “steampunk” stuff this book inspired put you off; this one’s informed by physical constraints etc.