The Great Eastern
A walk through the history of the Isle of Dogs
The largest ship of its time
From this spot, between November and December 1857, 13 separate unsuccessful attempts were made to launch the SS Great Easterm at the time the largest ship that had ever been built.The Great Eastern was an iron sailing steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and built by J. Scott Russell & Co. at Millwall Iron Works. It was built to carry both passengers and cargo between England and Australia and carried enough fuel to make the journey without stopping.
Work began on the Great Eastern in the spring of 1854 and was completed by November 1857. 2,000 men and boys built the ship, sometimes working at night by gaslight. Three million rivets were used to hold the iron plates of the hull together. The total cost of building the ship waw £920,000, a fortune at the time and over one hundred million pounds in modern-day currency.
Experimental in design, with double hull and powered by sail, steam engines and paddle wheels, the ship was intended to carry 12,000 tons of coal and travel at steady speed of 14 knots. It had a capacity for 800 first class passengers and 3,000 in second class. The Great Eastern was the first ship to be constructed almost entirely of metal and remained unmatched in size and strength for 40 years.
Finally launched
The huge vessel was finally launched sideways into the Thames in January 1858, to much celebration in the press. By September 1859 it was fitted out and ready for sea. The wooden piles and cross-pieces exposed on the bank here are thought to be the remains of the launching site of the ship.However the Great Eastern was not the success that either Brunel or the project's investors had hoped for. Damaged by an explosion on her mainden voyage, the ship was repaired but was not economical to operate and was too big for many docks. It plied her trade as an Atlantic passenger liner between the UK and USA rather than on longer routes as had been intended.
In 1866 the Great Eastern was converted to use for cable laying and laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable. It then spent eleven years rusting in Milford Haven, Wales and ended her life as a floating billboard for a department store in Liverpool, before being broken up on the Mersey in 1889.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Although of French descent, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) is considered a giant of British engineering and one of the most important figures of the industrial revolution. He built dockyards, the great Western Railway, sevearal important bridges and a series of steamships.The Great Eastern was the third of his shipbuilding projects. The first was a wooden paddle steamer called the Great Western. It was the first steamship to make regular crossings of the Atlantic Ocean. The second was the Great Britain, the first large iron steamship and the first big ship to use a screw propeller.
Brunel's innovative designs revolutionsised public transport and modern engineering.
Note, in the often sean photograph of Sir Isambard Kingdom Brunel stood by a wall made of enormous chain links, these are the launching chains for the Great Eastern.
Tags:Thames Walk
This update was first written by Darren Wall
on Sunday 1st Sep 2024.
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