SS Great Eastern

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Great Eastern at Heart's Content, July 1866
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 to New York
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)
Number of funnels: five, later on four
Propulsion: sail, paddle and screw
Number of masts: six
Number of Passengers: 4000
Crew: 418

The SS Great Eastern was an iron sailing steam 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".

Contents

[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" (passengers who don't pay) 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 (said to be named after the days of a week - Monday being the fore mast and Saturday the spanker mast), providing space for 1,686 m2 (18,148 square feet) of sails (7 gaff and max. 9 (usually 4) square sails), rigged similar like a topsail schooner with a main gaff sail (fore-and-aft sail) on each mast, one "jib" on the fore mast and three square sails on masts no. 2 and no. 3 (Tuesday & Wednesday); for a time mast no. 4 was also fitted with three yards. In later years, some of the yards were removed. According to some sources (see External links) she would have carried 5,435 m2 (58,502 sq ft). This amount of canvas is obviously too much for seven fore-and-aft sails and max. 9 square sails. This (larger) figure of sail area lies only a few square meters below that the famous Flying P-Liner Preussen carried - with her five full-rigged masts of 30 square sails and a lot of stay sails. Setting sails turned out to be unusable at the same time as the paddles and screw were under steam, because the hot exhaust from the five (later on four ones) 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 funnel no. 1 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. Funnel no. 4 and some boilers were removed as well as great parts of the passenger rooms and saloons to give way to open top tanks for taking up the coiled cable. She laid 4,200 km (2,600 statute miles) of the 1865 transatlantic telegraph cable. Under Captain Robert Halpin (born Wicklow, Ireland, 1836, died 1894) from 1866 to 1878 the ship laid over 26,000 n.m. of submarine telegraph cable including from Brest to St. Pierre-Miquelon (1869), Aden-Bombay (1869-70).

[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 safety standards of the late nineteenth century.

The accident of December 1861 Quote: 1861 ?Dec. 10?, Hurricane of a storm disables Great Eastern and it drifts helpless for 75 hours. On the 16th or 17th it managed to return to Cobh(Queenstown)

This accident was caused by breaking of the main rudder shaft. One of the passengers on the ship, an American engineer by the name of Hamilton Ela Towle, who was returning to the states after completing his contract working as a supervising engineer on the Danube River dry-docks in Austria was instrumental in saving the ship. He devised a sort of spider gear on a sling that could be lowered down into the rudder shaft well and was used to remove the broken rudder shaft. Without this device the ship would not have been able to remove the broken rudder shaft. Mr Towle claimed that his effort saved the ship, and filed a claim under the laws of salvage to receive compensation for his efforts. The case was taken to court, and Mr. Towle was awarded the sum of $15,000, which was quite a considerable sum for that period. The Scientific American published an account of the incident, and a description of Mr. Towle's device. I am not certain if Mr. Towle ever actually received any money, but I know that it was awarded to him by the court. This incident is recorded in the Towle family history.

[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 two dead bodies in the hull, including a child worker, 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, a worker and his apprentice, 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... ”
  • In the fantasy book The Scar, by China Miéville, the capital ship of Garwater riding is named the Grand Easterly. This ship shares many characteristics with the Great Eastern, including its prodigious size, difficulties in its early voyages, and combination of paddle and screw propulsion.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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