SS Great Eastern
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| Owners: | Great Eastern Ship Company |
| Builders: | Messrs Scott, Russel & Co. of Millwall yards in London, England |
| Laid down: | May 1, 1854 |
| Launched: | January 31, 1858 |
| Christened: | Not christened |
| Maiden voyage: | June 17, 1860 |
| Fate: | Broken up on 1889-90 |
| General Characteristics | |
|---|---|
| Gross Tonnage: | 18,915 |
| Displacement: | ~32,000 |
| Length: | 211 m (692 feet) |
| Beam: | 25 m (83 feet) |
| Power: | four steam engines for the paddles and an additional engine for the propeller. Total power was estimated at 6 MW (8,000 hp) |
| Propulsion: | sail, paddle and screw |
| Speed: | 24 km/h (13 knots) |
| Number of Passengers: | 4000 |
| Crew: | 418 |
The SS Great Eastern was a ship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. She was the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the world without refueling. She would only be surpassed in length in 1899 (by the SS Oceanic II) and in tonnage in 1901 (by the SS Celtic II). Brunel knew her affectionately as the "great babe".
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[edit] History
Brunel entered into a partnership with John Scott Russell, an experienced Naval Architect and ship builder, to build the Great Eastern. Unknown to Brunel, Russell was in financial difficulties. The two men disagreed on many details. It was Brunel's final great project, and he collapsed from a stroke after being photographed on her deck, and died only ten days later, a mere four days after Great Eastern's first sea trials. She was built by Messrs Scott, Russell & Co. of Millwall, London, the keel being laid down on May 1, 1854.
She was finally launched —after many technical difficulties— on January 31, 1858. She was 211 m (692 ft) long, 25 m (83 ft) wide, with a draft of 6.1 m (20 ft) unloaded and 9.1 m (30 ft) fully laden, and displaced 32,000 tons fully loaded. In comparison, SS Persia, launched in 1856, was 119 m (390 ft) long with a 14 m (45 ft) beam. She was at first named the SS Leviathan, but her high building and launching costs ruined the Eastern Steam Navigation Company and so she lay unfinished for a year before being sold to the Great Eastern Ship Company and finally renamed SS Great Eastern. It was decided she would be more profitable on the Southampton–New York run, and outfitted accordingly. Her eleven-day maiden voyage began on June 17, 1860, with 35 paying passengers, 8 company "dead heads" and 418 crew.
The hull was an all-iron construction, a double hull of 19 mm (0.75 inch) wrought iron in 0.86 m (2 ft 10in) plates with ribs every 1.8 m (6 ft). Internally the hull was divided by two 107 m (350 ft) long, 18 m (60 ft) high, longitudinal bulkheads and further transverse bulkheads dividing the ship into nineteen compartments. The Great Eastern was the first ship to incorporate the double-skinned hull, a feature which would not be seen again in a ship for 100 years, but which is now compulsory for reasons of safety. She had sail, paddle and screw propulsion. The paddle-wheels were 17 m (56 ft) in diameter and the four-bladed screw-propeller was 7.3 m (24 ft) across. The power came from four steam engines for the paddles and an additional engine for the propeller. Total power was estimated at 6 MW (8,000 hp). She had six masts, providing space for 1686 m2 (18,148 square feet) of sails, but the sails turned out to be unusable at the same time as the paddles and screw, because the hot exhaust from the five funnels would set them on fire. Her maximum speed was 24 km/h (13 knots).
Two people were killed in the difficult sideways-launch of the Great Eastern, and the ship became known to some as the unlucky ship. She was involved in a series of accidents, including a bizarre incident in which an overheated boiler launched a funnel like a rocket, killing a crew member and five boiler men in the process. The maiden voyage from Southampton to New York began on 17 June 1860. Among the 35 passengers, eight officials and a crew of 418, were two journalists, Zerah Colburn and Alexander Lyman Holley.
The vessel was sold for £25,000 (her build cost has been estimated at £500,000) and converted into a cable-laying ship. She laid 4200 km (2,600 statute miles) of the 1865 transatlantic telegraph cable under Captain Robert Halpin and took part in other similar operations.
[edit] Notable Accident
On August 27, 1862, The Great Eastern suffered an accident similar to that of the Titanic, but did not sink. She scraped on an uncharted rock off the coast of Long Island, which opened the outer hull over 9 feet wide and 83 long. However, the Great Eastern's inner hull was unbroken, and she made her way into New York the next day under her own steam. Nobody was hurt.
Because of this accident, some analysts claim that the Titanic was not so much an unsinkable ship, but rather a symbol of the diminishing security standard of the late 19th century.
[edit] Break up
She was broken up for scrap at Rock Ferry on the River Mersey in 1889–1890 —it took 18 months to take her apart.
While it's rumored that a skeleton was found inside the Great Eastern's double hull, the same thing has been said of the Titanic and the Hoover Dam (among others); and inspection hatches in the inner hull would have provided an easy escape. The ship was the subject of one programme in the BBC documentary series Seven Wonders of the Industrial World which repeated the tale about the dead body in the hull, presenting it as rumour rather than fact. However, Haunted History implied that the find of the skeleton was indeed factual. One of the narrators of the segment read an article published from the time when the Great Eastern was being dismantled. The article stated that the workers broke into a compartment in the inner shell on the port side, and did find a skeleton. Support for the skeleton find traces back to when the Great Eastern was being constructed, as it was discovered that two of the riveters had mysteriously vanished. It was believed that they had been sealed on the inside by accident.
Liverpool Football Club were looking for a flag pole for their Anfield ground, at the time of her local break up and consequently purchased the top mast. It still stands there today, at the Kop end [1].
[edit] Trivia
- The Greek surrealist poet Andreas Embirikos wrote a famous novel, Ο Μέγας Ανατολικός ('The Great Oriental'), which is set on the ship and describes it as a place of unbridled erotic lust. It was published posthumously in 1990.
- Brunel, in 1854, was known to have said:
| I have never embarked on any one thing to which I have so entirely devoted myself, and to which I have devoted so much time, thought and labour, on the success of which I have staked so much reputation... |
[edit] References
- James Dugan, The Great Iron Ship, 1953 (regularly reprinted) ISBN 0-7509-3447-6
- Jules Verne, A Floating City (fr:Une Ville flottante) (1871) -- describing his 1867 transatlantic voyage on the ship.
- Deborah Cadbury, Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, 1996 (reprinted 2003) ISBN 0-00-716304-5
- The Titanic Disaster: An Enduring Example of Money Management vs. Risk Management http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~branderr/risk_essay/titanic.html
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
