"Sirius" (Deutsches Museum Munich)

"Great Western" (contemporary press)

Britain's history is closely connected to her situation as an island at the eastern edge of the North Atlantic near to the European Continent. Ships and seamen formed substantially the character of the nation. When the Roman legions, which had occupied wide parts of England under Julius Caesar about 55 B.C., had left 450 years after, little has been heard about native navigation, and that did not change under Danish and Norman reign in the early Middle Ages. It was only King Henry VIII, who inspired to build a mighty naval force, together with an efficient merchant fleet. Britain's rise to the peak of the global powers has begun. One of the first maritime targets was to connect the colonies to the motherland, to erect supply bases and to take care for the development of a prosperous trade for the export of British products. Worldwide navigation helped the country to attain the first place in scientific, technical and cultural progress, too.

First Steamers
In the early decades of the 19th century the steamship started its triumphant advance over the 5000 years of prevalence of the sailing ship. After a relatively short pioneering phase, the American engineer Robert Fulton had proved in 1807 the economical efficiency of his steamship "Clermont" on the Hudson River, and only 12 years later the first vessel fitted with an auxiliary engine, the "Savannah" crossed the Atlantic Ocean. The first ship fitted with an auxiliary engine, which had crossed the Atlantic in the difficult east-west direction was the "Curacao", a boat of 436 tons, designed only for the Canadian costal service and sold to the Dutch navy. In 1826 she undertook the voyage from Helvoetsluis to Surinam, about half the time under steam. It was however not before 1838, that a ship arrived in the New World under continuous steam power. The "Sirius", a vessel of only 703 tons of the St. George Steam Packet Co., designed for short sea routes, stepped by chance into the breach for the British & American Steam Navigation Co. The "Sirius" left Cork in Ireland on 4 April 1838 and received a tumultuous welcome on 20 April in New York Harbour, being the first steamship of the Old World to get there. She arrived 3 1/2 hours ahead of the much bigger and faster "Great Western", which had departed on the longer route from Bristol on 8 April, delayed on account of damage by fire.

Brunel
The first ship specially designed for a transatlantic service has been the above-mentioned "Great Western", which proved outstandingly successful in the end, providing regular services between Bristol and the North American continent from 1838. Designed by the famous and most versatile engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, she paved the way for permanent transcontinental communication. It was not by accident that Bristol had been chosen as port of departure. The broad-gauge Great Western Railway, engineered by Brunel and completed in 1841, linked it with London. The Great Western Steamship Co. formed its extension. Brunel is quoted (by Howard Robinson) saying: "Why not make it longer and have a steamboat to go from Bristol to New York and call it Great Western?"

The 212 feet (65 m) long vessel of c.1,200 tons was powered by a side-level engine exerting 750 h.p. Her saloon was the largest and the most luxurious to be found by the date. And in the end the "Great Western" had proven as being the real winner. While the "Sirius" took 18 days and 10 hours for her passage, so did it the "Great Western" in 15 days and 5 hours. After a constant service on the transatlantic route, she was sold to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. and spent 10 other years on the West Indies trade.

The convincing feat of the "Great Western" encouraged Brunel to construct a ship of nearly triple the size. With a tonnage of 3,443 and a length of 322 feet (98 m), featuring 6 masts, the "Great Britain" so her name, surpassed not only all ruling principle dimensions. Completed in 1845, she was both the first screw-propelled ship to cross the ocean and the first with an iron hull to do so. Her construction at Bristol took nearly 6 years and caused a revolution in shipbuilding. Of course, her passenger accommodations set new standards, too. Brunel took also care of a comfortable riding by fitting - ahead of the time - rolling dampers and for safety sake by providing a double bottom. The latter rescued the ship from sinking after running aground off-shore of Ireland in 1846. The Great Western SS Co however could not afford to refit her. Sold to Gibbs, Bright & Co. and her rig reduced to 4 masts, she operated for other 30 years successfully on the Australian route. At last, dismantled of her engine and three of her 6 masts, she conveyed Welsh coal to Panama and San Francisco. Damaged in a heavy storm at Cape Horn, she sought refuge at the Falklands, where she was laid up as a hulk. From there she was towed back to Bristol in 1967 for receiving restoration to her original conditions.

Restless as I.K. Brunel had been, and despite the end of his Atlantic services on account of the lack of subsidies, he was looking ahead for a third, even much greater ship, sixfold the size of the "Great Britain", being capable to carry either 4,000 passengers in 3 classes or 10,000 soldiers together with some cargo, to destinations in the Far East. The envisaged dimensions he considered necessary to carry the required fresh water and fuel supply for a round trip because of the lack of bunker stations along that route that time. To commission and finance the giant, the Great Eastern Steamship Company was founded. The ship's provided name "Leviathan" was changed into "Great Eastern" before launch. With her dimensions of 18,916 tons, a length of 692 feet (211 m) at waterline and a width of 118 feet (36 m) over paddle boxes she was far ahead of her time. Sensational was also her threefold drive, consisting of a pair of paddle wheels of 55.8 feet (17 m) in diameter (the biggest ever built), a single propeller and an auxiliary schooner rigging on 6 masts. A 4-cylinder oscillating engine delivering 4,000 h.p. drove the huge paddle wheels, another one acted with 6,000 h.p. directly on the screw shaft. Ten boilers produced the steam for the engines and discharged through 5 funnels. Of course, also the amenities for the passengers had not been equaled by the time, featuring running hot and cold water in the first-class cabins. The dimensions of the ship remained unsurpassed until the early 20th century. Since her keel has been laid in 1854 at Milwal on the Isle of Dogs on the Thames, she was pursued by a series of misfortunes. A failed launching delayed the completion by three months. The trial run in 1859 ended with a disaster, when a boiler exploded and 6 persons were killed. Brunel, who was suffering after a stroke, died after he got notice of. When the "Great Eastern" had been completed, the Australian mail route was already operated regularly and coal depots were no longer a problem. On 17 June 1860 the "Great Eastern" went on her maiden trip not to the East, but from Southampton to New York. Only 43 passengers had booked for, and the captain, a helmsman and a ship's boy drowned when their gig capsized. At no time the ship won much popularity with the traveling clientele and carried only a fracture of the passengers having been hoped for. Built far ahead of her time, the huge ship drove several firms into bankruptcy.

After two Atlantic crossings her owner sold her to the newly founded Great Eastern Company in 1863. The new owner converted her into a cable layer, whereby she lost one of her 5 funnels. Apart from some trouble with a torn cable, she operated quite successfully in laying cables between France and America and between Aden and Bombay. In 1867 she returned again into the passenger business, mainly to carry visitors to the Paris World Fair that same year from New York to Brest. Thereafter she was laid up at Milford Haven for the next seven years. The attempt to make her a platform for a floating amusement park and a museum has proved a sad failure, too, and on 22 August 1888 she went on her last voyage to Birkenhead for scrapping, which was finished in 1891. Although the "Great Eastern" remained unsuccessful in their provided passenger trade, each of Brunel's ships had been a masterpiece of its own and his breathtaking daring, combined with his technical competence, paved the way for future progress helping Great Britain to attain the position of the leading shipbuilding nation for nearly a century.


"Great Britain" (Deutsches Museum Munich)


"Great Eastern" (Deutsches Museum Munich)