Great Eastern at Heart's Content, July 1866
Career
Builder:	Messrs J Scott Russell & Co. of Millwall yards in London, England
Laid down:	May 1, 1854
Launched:	January 31, 1858
Fate:	Broken up 1889-90
General characteristics
Displacement:	32,000 tonnes
Length:	211 metres (690 ft)
Beam:	25 metres (82 ft)
Propulsion:	Four steam engines for the paddles and an additional engine for the propeller. Total power was estimated at 6 MW (8,000 hp)
Speed:	24 kilometres per hour (13 kn)
Capacity:	4,000 passengers
Complement:	418

The SS Great Eastern's launch ramp at Millwall.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel , The famous Howlett photo of Brunel against the launching chains of the Great Eastern at Millwall in 1857

Great Eastern before launch in 1858

Brunel Longitudinal Section of the Great Eastern, the cross section of the Leviathan at her launch by IK Brunel in 1858

Great Eastern At Sea, the great ship of IK Brunel as imagined at sea by the artist at her launch in 1858

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 RMS Oceanic, 705 feet (215 m) and 17,274 gross tons) and in tonnage in 1901 (by the RMS Celtic, 700 feet (210 m) and 21,035 gross tons). Brunel knew her affectionately as the "great babe". He died shortly after her launch in 1858. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1000x740, 224 KB) Description:Great Eastern at Hearts Content, July 1866 Source: http://www. ... Hearts Content (47° 52′ 13″ N 53° 21′ 52″ W NST) an incoporated town in Trinity Bay on the Bay de Verde Peninsula of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. ... John Scott Russell John Scott Russell (9 May 1808, Glasgow – 8 June 1882) was a Scottish naval engineer who built the Great Eastern (the largest ship built at that time) in collaboration with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and made the discovery that gave birth to the modern study of solitons. ... , Millwall is an area in London, on the western side of the Isle of Dogs, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ... is the 121st day of the year (122nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1854 (MDCCCLIV) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... is the 31st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1858 (MDCCCLVIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... The megawatt (symbol: MW) is a unit for measuring power corresponding to one million (106) watts. ... This article is about a unit of measurement. ... , Millwall is an area in London, on the western side of the Isle of Dogs, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. ... Download high resolution version (461x714, 80 KB)Isambard Kingdom Brunel. ... Download high resolution version (461x714, 80 KB)Isambard Kingdom Brunel. ... Scene at unsuccessful launch of SS Great Eastern, Isle of Dogs, London, 1858 This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Scene at unsuccessful launch of SS Great Eastern, Isle of Dogs, London, 1858 This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Paddle steamers - Lucerne-Switzerland Left: original paddlewheel from a paddle steamer on the lake of Lucerne. ... Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS (9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) (IPA: ), was a British engineer. ... The RMS Oceanic was a luxury ocean liner similar to the Aquitania, the Lusitania, the Britannic, the Mauritania, and the Titanic, but was considered to be in a class of its own. ... RMS Celtic was an ocean liner belonging to the White Star Line. ...

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. About the ship, Brunel 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." John Scott Russell John Scott Russell (9 May 1808, Glasgow – 8 June 1882) was a Scottish naval engineer who built the Great Eastern (the largest ship built at that time) in collaboration with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and made the discovery that gave birth to the modern study of solitons. ...

The Great Eastern 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 "dead heads" (passengers who don't pay) and 418 crew. , Millwall is an area in London, on the western side of the Isle of Dogs, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. ... is the 121st day of the year (122nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1854 (MDCCCLIV) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... is the 31st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1858 (MDCCCLVIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... The draft of a ships hull is the vertical distance from the bottom of the hull to the waterline. ... For other uses, see Southampton (disambiguation). ... This article is about the state. ... The maiden voyage of a ship or aircraft is the first cruise or flight in revenue service, typically following a series of shakedown cruises or test-flights. ... is the 168th day of the year (169th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1860 is the leap year starting on Sunday. ...

The hull was an all-iron construction, a double hull of 19 mm (0.75 inch) wrought iron in 0.86 m (2 ft 10 in) 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 (3 m). 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). An inch (plural: inches; symbol or abbreviation: in or, sometimes, ″ - a double prime) is the name of a unit of length in a number of different systems, including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. ... A double hull is a ship hull design and construction method where the bottom and sides of the ship have two complete layers of watertight hull surface: one outer layer forming the normal hull of the ship, and a second inner hull which is somewhat further into the ship, perhaps... For other uses, see Propeller (disambiguation). ... This article is about a unit of measurement. ... A spanker is either of two kinds of sail. ... A square metre (US spelling: square meter) is by definition the area enclosed by a square with sides each 1 metre long. ... A fore-and-aft rig is a sailing rig consisting mainly of sails that are set along the line of the keel rather than perpendicular to it. ... The Flying P-Liners were the sailing ships of the German F. Laeisz shipping company from Hamburg. ... Preussen leaving New York under all plain sail (1908) The Preussen was a steel-hulled five masted ship-rigged windjammer built in 1902 for the famous German F. Laeisz shipping company. ... Some knots: 1. ...

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 a valve being left shut by accident after a pressure test of the system^[1]. 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. This article is about vehicles powered by rocket engines. ... This article is about the state. ... is the 168th day of the year (169th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1860 is the leap year starting on Sunday. ... Zerah Colburn (1804-1840) was a famous child prodigy of the 19th century. ... Alexander Lyman Holley (born 20 July 1832 - died 29 January 1882) was a mechanical engineer and was considered the foremost steel and plant engineer and designer of his time, especially in regard to applying research to modern steel manufacturing processes. ...

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. A mile is any of several units of distance, or, in physics terminology, of length. ... The first transatlantic telegraph cable crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Foilhommerum, Valentia Island, in western Ireland to Hearts Content, in eastern Newfoundland. ... Robert Charles Halpin (born February 16, 1836 in Wicklow, Ireland) captained the gigantic SS Great Eastern which laid transoceanic telegraph cables in the late 1800s. ... A nautical mile or sea mile is a unit of length. ... Brest is a city in Brittany, or the Bretagne région, north-west France, sous-préfecture of the Finistère département. ... Port of Aden (around 1910). ... This article or section should be merged with Mumbai Mumbai (previously known as Bombay) is the worlds most populous conurbation, and is the sixth most populous agglomeration in the world. ...

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 of the money awarded to him by the court. Length 2,888 km Elevation of the source 1,078 m Average discharge 30 km before Passau: 580 m³/s Vienna: 1,900 m³/s Budapest: 2,350 m³/s just before Delta: 6,500 m³/s Area watershed 817,000 km² Origin Black Forest (Schwarzwald-Baar, Baden- Württemberg, Germany... Scientific American is a popular-science magazine, published (first weekly and later monthly) since August 28, 1845, making it the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. ...

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) a mile east of Montauk, New York on Long Island, opening a gash in the outer hull over 9 feet (2.7 m) wide and 83 feet (25 m) 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, indeed the passengers never even knew what had happened. A smaller rip sank the Titanic. 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. is the 239th day of the year (240th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about 1862 . ... Look up titanic, Titanic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Montauk is a hamlet (and census-designated place) in Suffolk County, New York on the South Shore of Long Island. ... This article is about the island in New York State. ... dam stands for dekametre. ...

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 19th century.

In October 2007, the recovery of a 6,500-pound (2.9 t) anchor in 70 feet (21 m) of water about four miles (6 km) from the rock has stirred speculation that it may have belonged to the Great Eastern.^[2]

Break up

At the end of her cable laying career she was refitted once again as a liner but once again efforts to make her a commercial success failed. She was used as a showboat, a floating palace/concert hall and gymnasium. By the time she was sold piecemeal at auction in 1888 she had become an embarrassment.

She was broken up for scrap at Rock Ferry on the River Mersey by Henry Bath & Son Ltd in 1889–1890 —it took 18 months to take her apart. Rock Ferry is a suburb of Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula, England. ... The River Mersey is a river in north west England. ...

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 fact (even though stating it as a rumour). An episode of Haunted History also 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.^[3] The idea of one or more skeletons sealed inside the hull traces back to the construction of the Great Eastern, when 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.^{[citation needed]} For other uses, see Titanic (disambiguation). ... For the dam near Westerville, Ohio, see Hoover Dam (Ohio). ... For other uses, see BBC (disambiguation). ... This article is about a book. ... Haunted History was a 1998 UFA/Cafe Productions series exploring the supernatural. ...

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.^[4] Liverpool Football Club is the most successful English football team, having won 4 European Cups and 18 league (English Premier League, formerly First Division) titles. ... This article is about the football stadium. ... This article is about the football stadium. ...

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

This article is about the French author. ... A Floating City is a science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne (1828–1905). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... This article is about a book. ... Andrew Joseph Kelly (born 15 November 1984 Malvern), youngest of four children born to Irene Margaret Price and Desmond Joseph Kelly. ...

See also

• Steering engine - the Great Eastern was the first ship so equipped
• Transatlantic telegraph cable

The first transatlantic telegraph cable crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Foilhommerum, Valentia Island, in western Ireland to Hearts Content, in eastern Newfoundland. ...

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Great Eastern

• 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
• First voyage of the Great Eastern, in The Engineer, September 16, 1859.