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 |
| 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 |
She was built in partnership with an experienced ship designer, John Scott Russell. Unknown to Brunel, Russell was in financial difficulties. The two men disagreed on many details. It was Brunel's final great project, as he collapsed 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 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 and took part in other similar operations before being broken up for scrap in 1889–1890 —it took 18 months to take her apart. While it's rumored that a skeleton was found inside the double hull, the same thing has been said of the Titanic and the Hoover Dam (among others); there is no evidence of its truth in this or any other case. (Specifically, there was no remark about it in the press at the time, nor any investigation into related disappearances. In addition, inspection hatches in the inner hull would have provided an easy escape.)
The ship was the subject of one of the programmes in the BBC documentary series Seven Wonders of the Industrial World which repeated the rumour about the dead bodies in the hull, but did present it as a rumour, rather than claiming it to be a fact.
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.
References
- James Dugan, The Great Iron Ship, 1953 (regularly reprinted) ISBN 0750934476
- Jules Verne, A Floating City (fr:Une Ville flottante) (1871) -- describing his 1867 transatlantic voyage on the ship.
See also
Robert Halpin, captainExternal links
- [Great Eastern Salvage] web site
- [Brief description of the Great Eastern]
- [Great Eastern timeline]
- [Great Eastern, 1860–1888]
- [The Calamitous Titan]
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