SS GREAT EASTERN

''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". He died shortly after her launch in 1858.

Contents

History

Notable accidents

The accident of December 1861

The Great Eastern Rock

Break up

Trivia

References

See also

External links

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 she was outfitted accordingly. Her eleven-day maiden voyage began on June 17, 1860, with 35 paying passengers, 8 company "" (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 to 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 four) 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 an unfortunate incident in which an overheated steam pipe launched funnel no. 1 like a rocket, killing a crew member and five boiler men in the process. It was caused by incorrectly plumbed pipework. 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, from 1866 to 1878 the ship laid over 48,000 km (26,000 nautical miles) of submarine telegraph cable including from Brest, France to Saint Pierre and Miquelon in 1869, and from Aden to Bombay in 1869 and 1870.

Notable accidents

The accident of December 1861

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's crew 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. It is uncertain if Mr. Towle ever actually received any money, but it was awarded to him by the court.

The Great Eastern Rock

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 needle (afterwards named the ''Great Eastern Rock'') off the coast of Long Island, opening a gash in the outer hull over 9 feet wide and 83 feet 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. The enormous size of the ''Great Eastern'' precluded the use of any drydock repair facility in the US, and the brothers Henry and Edward S. Renwick devised a daring plan to build a watertight cofferdam. Repairs took five months.
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.

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 is rumoured 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]

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:

★ 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.

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

★ Edited by Andrew Kelly and Melanie Kelly, "Brunel - In Love With the Impossible", 2006 by Bristol Cultural Development Partnership, Hardback ISBN 0955074207, Paperback ISBN 0955074215

See also

★ Transatlantic telegraph cable

External links

★ The ''Great Eastern'' and Cable Laying

★ Great Eastern Salvage web site

★ Brief description of the ''Great Eastern''

★ ''Great Eastern'' timeline

★ ''Great Eastern'', 1860–1888

★ The Calamitous Titan