Читать книгу Seven Wonders of the Industrial World - Deborah Cadbury, Deborah Cadbury - Страница 5

‘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 …’

Isambard Kingdom Brunel on the Great Eastern, 1854

IN 1857, ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL, Britain’s foremost engineer, paused one day for a photograph in Napier shipyard at Millwall in east London. Cigar in mouth, with mud caked on his shoes and trousers, this is no formal photograph. He has his hands in his pockets, his clothes are creased, his hair untidy. The face and, particularly, the eyes are absorbed in something that can only be imagined, something that occupies him completely. He looks like a man with a future.

Brunel was at the peak of his fame, his latest venture had become the talk of England. Behind him rose the massive dark shape of the hull of the Great Eastern, the largest ship in the world, the Leviathan of her day. Expectant sightseers from across Europe came to see her on the banks of the Thames, where she rose, wrote Charles Dickens, ‘above the house-tops, above the tree-tops, standing in impressive calmness like some huge cathedral’. Nothing like this had been seen before; when complete, she would be the largest moving man-made object ever built and, for many, a symbol of the greatness of the British Empire. Yet far from being the final triumph in Brunel’s brilliant career, the Great Eastern was to become the monstrous creation that would destroy him.

Brunel’s grand scheme had begun to take shape a few years earlier, shortly after the Great Exhibition of 1851. Britain had seen a spectacular boom in the railway industry, with over 6,000 miles of track laid since the 1830s. Brunel himself, caught up in the thick of railway mania, was increasingly disillusioned by it. ‘The whole world is railway mad,’ he protested to a friend. ‘I am really sick of hearing proposals made.’ Among his sketches for Paddington Station in London in 1852, his notebooks reveal drawings of his next bold venture: a great steamship, almost twice the length of any ship ever built.

He dreamed of a floating city, majestic by day and a brilliant mirage at night, reflecting a million lights in the dark water. It was to be a ship of such vast and unheard of proportions that she could carry 4,000 passengers in pampered luxury as she steamed through distant seas. In the evening there would be dancing under sparkling chandeliers, or a stroll on deck in especially manufactured ‘moonlight’ as she pursued her steady course to the Antipodes magically, without need of refuelling. But could Brunel ever realise his dream and build the ‘Crystal Palace of the Seas’? And who could afford to support him?

Most ships docking in the Thames in the mid-nineteenth century were made of wood and built to a traditional design around a skeleton of wooden ribs giving strength to the hull. They were wind powered and usually little more than 150 feet in length. Brunel’s ‘Great Ship’, as she came to be known, was to be 692 feet long, 120 feet wide and 58 feet deep. Enormous engines as high as a house, with the power of over 8,000 galloping horses, would drive her paddle wheels and screw. In addition, an impressive 6,500 yards of sail would be carried on six masts and five funnels that were spread along her deck. The revolutionary new design of her hull, strong and streamlined, would see her cut through the seas as smoothly as a knife cuts butter and she would have the practical ability to carry all her own fuel to the furthest reaches of the empire and back. Brunel felt certain there was a need for such a ship.

To most shipbuilders of the day, Brunel’s Great Ship would have seemed an unattainable, magnificent dream, but Brunel had a way with dreams – his ‘châteaux d’Espagne’. At twenty, he had risked his life as engineer on the first tunnel under the Thames. At twenty-four he was elected a member of the Royal Society. He went on to design five suspension bridges including the magnificent Clifton Suspension Bridge at Bristol, as well as wet and dry docks, tunnels and piers. In 1833, he became engineer-in-chief to the Great Western Railway. His trains, speeding at 50 m.p.h. past fields and villages, opened up England and joined distant cities. He surveyed and planned the route from Paddington to Bristol, designing the track, cuttings, tunnels, stations and trains – even the signal boxes and at least 125 bridges on the route west. As he built the Great Western Railway, his dreams became even grander. He imagined large steamships that would go further west, sailing out across the Atlantic to America, shrinking the world’s oceans and creating a global system of transport.

Brunel launched the Great Western in 1837, which although constructed traditionally in wood was the largest steamship ever built and faster too. In 1843, he surpassed this with his second ship, the Great Britain, which at nearly 322 feet long and 50 feet wide was the first large iron screw steamship, with a new design of hull and increased emphasis on longitudinal strength. The Great Britain was not built in the traditional rib design; instead, ten iron girders ran the length of the vessel at the base. Everything about the ship was designed for strength and she became an extremely profitable vessel on the Australia run. In 1851, with the discovery of gold in Australia, and increasing demand for passenger and mail traffic to the East, Brunel could see a commercial possibility for an even bigger ship. ‘Size in a ship is an element of speed,’ he argued, ‘and of strength and of safety and of great relative economy.’

In the spring of 1852, Brunel approached the leading naval architect of the day, John Scott Russell, to seek advice about the feasibility of his plan for the Great Ship. Scott Russell had made his name streamlining the design of ships’ hulls for maximum efficiency with his ‘wave-line theory’. Brunel admired him and respected his achievements, notably his original work on hull design. ‘With respect to the form and construction of the vessel itself,’ said Brunel, ‘nobody can, in my opinion, bring more scientific and practical knowledge to bear than Mr Scott Russell.’

Scott Russell was equally impressed with Brunel and his extraordinary idea for the Great Ship. He suggested that they present the plan for the vessel to the Eastern Steam Navigation Company. This company had recently lost the mail contract to the Far East to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company and were thought to be looking for a way to revive their fortunes on the route to India, China and Australia. Although a committee at the Eastern Steam Navigation Company decided in favour of the plan and appointed Brunel as engineer, the proposal caused a heated debate with some directors resigning. Indeed, Brunel soon learnt that ‘certain of the directors … opposed me personally’.

Undeterred, he threw himself into finding others interested in the project, and by the time capital for the venture was found, more than half of the new directors were nominated by Brunel. Charles Geach, MP for Coventry and chairman of the Midland Bank, was an important member of the committee and a business associate of Scott Russell to whom he supplied iron from a smelting company where he was a partner. Brunel, aware that most of the directors were of his choosing, felt ‘the heavy responsibility of having induced more than half the present directors of the company to join’. The fact was, he admitted, ‘I 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.’

By May 1853, enough shares had been sold to make a start and Scott Russell presented his estimate to the board for £377,200 to build the ship. The hull was £275,200, the screw engines were £60,000 and the paddle engines and boilers were £42,000. Since Brunel had calculated the cost of the ship as somewhere near half a million pounds, the board was delighted with Scott Russell’s price. Scott Russell had, however, seriously underestimated his costing. He wanted the commission so much that it is possible that he put in a low bid to ensure he got it, but the subsequent shortage of funds was to put the venture in jeopardy.

Soon Scott Russell faced further difficulties when, in September 1853, fire broke out in his shipyard. As the flames licked hungrily around the carpenters’ shop, the boilermakers’ shop and the timberyard, the London fire brigade ‘hurried towards the seat of the calamity … [but] unfortunately the light of the fire deceived them,’ reported The Times. They galloped at full speed down the wrong side of the river and were almost at Deptford before they realised where the fire was raging. In their rush back across London Bridge, ‘a body of the fire brigade were nearly killed as the horses galloped with the engine into a hole eight feet deep, pitching all the firemen off the machine’. It took over an hour for the fire engines to reach the scene, by which time the fire was well entrenched. By the light of day everything in Scott Russell’s yard was reduced to charred, black, smoking stumps. The damage was estimated at around £140,000 and most of the yard had not been insured.

A worrying and faintly discordant background to the ambitious project was becoming discernible. Russell’s yard was temporarily demolished and he was financially embarrassed. His yard lacked supervision, too, and with no provision for safeguarding large supplies, pilfering was rife. And, despite the fact that the Great Eastern was twice the size of any previous ship, she was to be built in a traditional shipyard with no special arrangements made for her construction. In this vaguely uneasy situation, Brunel insisted on total control.

Finally, in December 1853, all parties signed contracts for the Great Ship. Scott Russell was to build the hull and paddle engines, the celebrated James Watt and Co. would build the screw engines and Brunel was to approve all changes and drawings at every stage of the construction process. ‘I cannot act under any supervision,’ he said, ‘or form part of a system that recognises any other adviser than myself.’ Indeed, everything concerning the Great Ship was to be ‘to the entire satisfaction of the engineer’.

However, conflicts soon arose over the methods of payment. Brunel wanted to pay Scott Russell as work progressed, calculated on the amount of iron put into the ship on a monthly basis; this was the custom adopted for his railway contracts. Scott Russell, meanwhile, expected to be paid lump sums on a more regular basis so that he had sufficient cash to meet expenses. Liquidity, which had always been a problem for Scott Russell, was now made worse as some of his payment for work on the hull was in company shares, although Charles Geach helped by taking shares as payment for his iron instead of cash.

The most immediate practical concern for Brunel was where to build and launch his ship. The contract had stipulated that the ship be built in a dry dock but Scott Russell’s yard was too small for Brunel’s vast project. Scott Russell, needing more space, rented Napier shipyard adjoining his at Millwall to accommodate the construction of the hull. They realised that building the ship on an end slip was impossible; the bow would be 100 feet in the air during construction. It was also out of the question to launch a 700-foot-long ship stern first in the traditional way, when at that point the river was a mere 1,000 feet wide. After much deliberation, Brunel decided to build the ship on the bank parallel to the river and launch her into the Thames sideways down a gentle slope. To prepare the site, 2,000 oak beams up to 40 feet long were piled 5 feet apart into the shore, leaving 4 feet above ground. Further packing was then added and the flat-bottomed hull would rest on two large cradles.

In March 1854, just as they were finally ready to start construction work on the hull, Britain entered the Crimean War. With supplies needed for the military, the price of iron rose rapidly. A few months later, Scott Russell faced another major setback: the unexpected death of Charles Geach. ‘The Honourable Member had returned from his Scotch shooting in unusually good health,’ reported The Times. However, he had been suffering from a dangerous infection in his leg. A change for the worse occurred, ‘and after much suffering borne with the greatest fortitude and resignation, Mr Geach expired at half past 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon’.

This was a disaster for Scott Russell. Geach was crucial to the iron supply and was the one person who had accepted flexible terms of payment on this immensely expensive project. Scott Russell’s solution was a dangerous one. Unknown to Brunel and the other directors, he secretly mortgaged his shipyard, thereby putting the Great Ship at risk. Brunel had not worked closely on a financial venture before with Scott Russell and was unaware, at this point, of the danger signals beginning to emerge that could affect the future of his ‘Great Babe’, as he affectionately nicknamed his new creation.

In spite of the precarious financial situation, the hull was slowly rising, a massive dark shape against the water and sky. It was being built at a big southerly bend in the river at Millwall on the Isle of Dogs, about six miles down river from Westminster and 40 miles to the open sea. This was an undeveloped part of London, previously the haunt of wildlife, with little but ‘marshy fields and muddy ditches, with here and there, a meditative cow cropping herbage’. Now it was the site of a technological revolution that would inspire shipbuilding for years to come.

Brunel’s original idea for the design of the hull was evolved from lessons learnt in his bridge-building days. A key innovation was to have a double hull, heavily braced up to the water line, one hull inside the other and 2 foot 10 inches apart. These were to be constructed from 30,000 iron plates, each ³/₄ inch thick. The deck, too, would consist of two thicknesses of ¹/₂ inch iron plate. Strength was further guaranteed by longitudinal and transverse bulkheads. According to Scott Russell, ‘the longitudinal system is carried throughout unbroken, without interruption by the bulk heads’ and the watertight transverse bulkheads, 60 feet apart the length of the ship, made her, it was hoped, virtually unsinkable. With this cellular double hull, the bulkheads and the strong watertight deck, Brunel compared the strength of the hull to that of a box girder.

This unique vessel was to be powered by both screw and paddle engines to give greater flexibility and manoeuvrability. The engines themselves would be giants, 40 feet high; the cylinders on the screw engines alone had a bore of seven feet by fourteen. And before the crankshaft for the paddle engines could even be made, new larger furnaces had to be built.

The giant hull was attended by an army more than a thousand strong of riveters, bashers and shipwrights. Men were busy inside, outside, high up, low down, creeping and crawling between the hulls, up at the bow, down at the stern, hammering, clanking, banging, carting iron, moving wood and hammering the rivets. Swarming all over the ship, they gave the impression of ants on a giant carcass. Depending on the light, men worked twelve-hour days and a skilled man could earn 30 to 40 shillings a week. There was no certainty of continued employment and plenty of men were waiting to step into the shoes of anyone who left their work.

The noise coming from the shipyard was deafening. The ringing sound of metal hitting metal reverberated throughout the hull. Two hundred riveting teams working both inside and outside the hull hammered unceasingly at a total of three million one-inch-thick, white-hot rivets. Each rivet would be held in place by a man on the other side of the plate. Children were employed as part of the team tending the forge and placing the heated rivets in the holes. They were particularly useful working in the double hull, where with limited space it was difficult for a man to manoeuvre. Working in the dark, confined space of the double hull, it did not do to lose concentration, even after a twelve-hour shift. One moment of carelessness could be paid for with a hand, or an arm, or a life.

Accidents were commonplace. It was all too easy to miss a step and, falling from a height, involve another man in disaster in the overcrowded conditions. One worker who was making bolts got his hands tangled in the machinery and torn completely from their sockets at the wrist. In his case, amputation of both arms was the only solution. Yet another man, curious about the working of a piledriver, was bent over examining the machinery when the hammer came down, flattening his head. Children were particularly vulnerable. They could be working in the yard as young as nine or ten. One unfortunate child fell from a height and was impaled on an upright iron bar. According to one witness, ‘after he was dead, his body quivered for some time’. There was always another boy willing to take his place for a shilling or two. A rumour persisted at this time that a riveter and his boy had somehow been forgotten and were entombed alive in a section of hull. Months later, workers said they could hear the ghosts hammering, trying to escape. Most were sure this tragedy would put a curse on the ship.

As work progressed it became apparent that Brunel and Scott Russell, the two great men locked into building this ship together, were very different in style and temperament. Brunel was married to his work, always absorbed in every detail. He thought nothing of getting dirty in the course of a working day. His wife, Mary, known as ‘the Duchess of Kensington’ on account of her beauty and style, rarely saw him at their elegant London home because he worked eighteen hours a day. Scott Russell, on the other hand, had a more relaxed managerial style – he delegated. As he sat in his impressive office, he expected the chain of command to work perfectly around him. He did not expect to get his beautifully tailored clothes dirty and left the management of the site to his yard managers, Hepworth and Dixon, who were responsible for the shipwrights. Increasingly, Brunel and Scott Russell found themselves in disagreement.

As the work on the Great Ship progressed and her shape became more evident, the press began to take an interest. They estimated that the Leviathan or Great Eastern, as she became known, had greater dimensions even than Noah’s Ark. ‘Great Eastern Fever’ began to spread throughout the country and the ship soon came to symbolise the ‘moral supremacy’ of the British Empire. Yet for all the growing national excitement, a serious rift between Brunel and Scott Russell was to emerge.

An article in The Observer in November 1854 sparked the first open clash. The paper had mistakenly credited Scott Russell with playing the major role in the design of the Great Ship. They quoted him ‘as carrying out the design’ and claimed that Mr Brunel had merely ‘approved of the project’. Brunel was furious and he wrote to Eastern Steam company secretary John Yates, correcting this error in no uncertain terms. He strongly suspected that Russell or one of his men had leaked the article. ‘This bears rather evidently a stamp of authority, or at least it professes to give an account of detail which could only be obtained from ourselves,’ he wrote. ‘I cannot allow it to be stated, apparently on authority, while I have the whole heavy responsibility of success resting on my shoulders, that I am the mere passive approver of the project of another, which in fact originated solely with me and has been worked out by me at great cost of labour and thought devoted to it for not less than three years.’ Quite how the information had reached The Observer was never ascertained.

Difficulties increased during the winter of 1854 with Scott Russell facing growing financial problems following the death of Charles Geach. His bank refused to give him any more credit, so he asked the board of Eastern Steam if he could be paid in future on a regular monthly basis for work accomplished. In April 1855, there was another fire at his yard and, while no damage was done to the Great Ship, he bore a further loss of £45,000. Faced with these difficulties and endless delays in construction at Scott Russell’s yard, Brunel was reluctantly forced to concede that the launch date, originally planned for October 1855, would have to be deferred.

A fundamental conflict between the two men arose over the method of launching the Great Ship. At an estimated 12,000 tons, this was the largest weight ever moved by man and it needed to be moved 200 feet into the river. Brunel had given much thought to the problem and had come to the conclusion that the only way to achieve this was through a ‘controlled’ launch. This was a most unusual procedure. Pushing the mighty 700-foot-long ship sideways into the river seemed fraught with problems, but Brunel, undaunted, insisted it was the only way to launch her. Anything else would be a disaster. He envisaged the possibility of the ship getting stuck or, worse, moving into the river far too quickly and keeling over or breaking up. He preferred to err on the side of caution and planned to use restraining chains to control the ship’s progress gently down the slope.

Scott Russell was totally opposed to a controlled launch. He pointed out that ‘free’ launches, admittedly of smaller ships, were carried out on the Great Lakes of America successfully. He was also worried about the cost of a controlled launch. Since Scott Russell was under contract to launch the ship and Brunel’s plan was estimated to cost an extra £10,000, he was not to be moved on this subject.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1855, Brunel was concerned as Scott Russell became increasingly uncooperative. He would be unavailable, slow in replying to letters and vague with the information that he did give. Brunel needed specific facts that would enable him to work out launching requirements and his irritation with Scott Russell grew. ‘I begin to be quite alarmed at the state of your contract,’ he wrote. ‘Four months are gone and I cannot say even the designs are completed … to justify a single bit of work being proceeded with.’ In May 1855, he wrote again to Russell in an exasperated tone: ‘Your reply this morning to my long list of complaints is an admirable specimen of an Under-Secretary’s reply in the House to a Member’s motion – it does not satisfy one single honest craving for information and for assurance of remedy … I do not want better indicators than usual … Those made on this occasion and to which I object were absurd – like the attempts at writing of a two year old baby.’

As the summer wore on, Scott Russell, faced with yet another fire at his yard, became more and more immersed in his financial uncertainties. And Brunel was totally consumed with giving life to his creation; transforming so many lifeless tons of iron and wood into the majestic shape of his inner vision. To this end he was always occupied, dealing with endless problems and finding endless solutions. He went to Haverfordwest in Wales to organise jetties where the Great Ship would take on coal. He found the man whom he felt had the necessary qualities and experience to captain his great ship: William Harrison. There were also detailed discussions to be had on the design of the engines. Brunel was soon worried to hear that Scott Russell was not fulfilling his contract. It had become apparent that the work on the hull was not commensurate with the amount of money Scott Russell had received. Scott Russell had in fact been paid the bulk of the money, but there was still a massive amount of work to do before the hull was anywhere near complete. Brunel slept only four hours a night and worked like a man possessed.

By late summer, Brunel was still trying to get information from Scott Russell that might affect plans for the launch of the ship. Again, he wrote requesting information from Scott Russell concerning the centre of gravity for the ship and, again, he felt the reply he received was too vague. Scott Russell meanwhile wrote with a request for more money – £37,673 to be precise. He argued that this sum was for extra work – alterations that Brunel had made to the original designs. This led to lengthy arguments and nurtured the growing distrust between the two men. Scott Russell did provide a launch date for March 1856 but infuriated Brunel by carelessly giving the wrong information on the tonnage of the vessel. Brunel was angry. ‘How the devil can you say you satisfied yourself at the weight of the ship,’ he wrote to Scott Russell in October 1855, ‘when the figures your clerk gave you are 1,000 tons less than I make it or than you made it a few months ago – for shame – if you are satisfied. I am sorry to give you more trouble but I think you will thank me for it – I wish you were my obedient servant, I should begin by a little flogging.’

By now, very little charm was wasted in dealings between the two men. Scott Russell replied with a request for more money needed to pay the banker, Martin’s Bank, who held his yard in mortgage. The Great Ship, it seemed, was eating money and he could not obtain credit from anywhere. He wrote again to Brunel insisting on regular payments, saying, ‘I fear I shall get into trouble unless we can see our way to a definite arrangement for the future. I am keeping an enormous establishment of people night and day. I either must have payment with certainty or reduce my number of hands.’ Trying to ease the strain on his finances, Scott Russell had taken orders for six other smaller ships, which he was building in the yard of the Great Ship, and on which the labour force was increasingly deployed. To add to Brunel’s disgust, the smaller craft in the yard were so placed that essential work on the Great Ship was made impossible. And still Scott Russell had not produced the information needed for the launch. Brunel wrote again on 2 December 1855, ‘I must beg you to let me have with the least possible delay the correct position of the centre of flotation at the 15’ draft line … I cannot stand any longer the anxiety I have felt ever since we commenced the ship as to her launching.’

Yet no information was forthcoming from Scott Russell. Whether Scott Russell was deliberately holding back the information Brunel required in the hope that he would be forced eventually into a cheaper uncontrolled launch is not known. Brunel defeated him; he managed to ascertain the centre of flotation and soon had plans prepared for the launching cradles and launch-ways. Scott Russell complained to the board, pointing out that the controlled launch had not been part of the original plan and that the additional cost he faced was prohibitive.

By January 1856, Brunel had finally had enough. He voiced his concerns to the board of the Eastern Steam Navigation Company, reporting that a ‘large deficiency’ in iron ‘appeared to exist’ at the yard which was difficult to understand as ‘I do not now believe that any mistake has been intentionally made or even intentionally overlooked … and have been assured … that none of the iron so imported was ever knowingly used for other purposes … I make the quantity in the yard about 1,400 tons but this would still leave 800 or 900 tons to be accounted for and I am totally at a loss to suggest even a probable explanation.’ To make his position absolutely clear, he went on to say,

I have great cause to complain of neglect or to say the least of it of inattention to my orders and remonstrances. My instructions even when repeated frequently and formally in writing are much disregarded … Mr Russell, I regret to say, no longer appears to attend either to my friendly representations and entreaties or to my own formal demands and my duty to the company compels me to state that I see no means of obtaining proper attention to the terms of the contract otherwise than by refusing to recommend the advance of any more money.

Dark clouds were gathering over the shipyard. If Scott Russell were eventually made bankrupt, the Great Ship might belong to the creditors. A crisis was reached when Martin’s, Scott Russell’s bankers, refused to honour his cheques. Scott Russell laid off the workers in the yard, saying he could no longer continue with the work. The board of Eastern Steam, on Brunel’s advice, seized the Great Ship, stating that Scott Russell had breached his contract. The creditors were informed, the accountants moved in, and work on the Great Ship came to a complete stop.

The board submitted a claim on Scott Russell’s estate citing breach of contract, only to find there was no estate left on which they could claim. Brunel had been unaware that Scott Russell had mortgaged his yard and that there were a number of creditors, Beale and Co., the iron manufacturer, being the largest. Apart from the mounting debt and the missing iron, it emerged that although only about a quarter of the work had been completed on the hull, Scott Russell had somehow been paid £292,295. The board of Eastern Steam and its worried shareholders now found themselves in the hands of Martin’s Bank, which had prior claims. After much difficult discussion the bank acknowledged that Eastern Steam had rights too, and agreed to renew the lease of the shipyard – but just until August 1857.

Brunel was understandably worried. ‘I feel a much heavier responsibility now thrown upon me than I ever intended to take upon myself,’ he wrote. He still had Hepworth and Dickson from Scott Russell’s establishment to work with, and, better still, Daniel Gooch, a colleague and old friend involved in his railway commissions, was approved as his assistant. Scott Russell, however, was humiliated. ‘I intend to be very cautious and to keep every string which it devolves on me to pull, tightly in my own hands,’ Brunel told him. ‘It would therefore be in the position of an assistant of mine – that I should propose to engage your services.’

The last two years had been immensely difficult for Brunel as he tried to bring his work of creative genius to fruition. The burden of organising such a vast project against such a fraught background was beginning to exact a price. He had taken liberties all his life with his strong constitution and robust health, ignoring warnings, winning glory and generally taking life at a gallop, but now the rumour spread that he was ill. With little over a year left in which to launch his Great Ship before the bank took control of the yard, Brunel was facing the supreme test of his entire career.

‘Where is man to go for a new sight?’ asked The Times in April 1857. ‘We think we can say. In the midst of that dreary region known as Millwall, where the atmosphere is tarry, and everything seems slimy and amphibious, where it is hard to say whether the land has been rescued from the water or the water encroached upon the land … a gigantic scheme is in progress, which if not an entire novelty, is at as near an approach to it as this generation is ever likely to witness.’ The excitement was tangible; with Brunel in complete charge work progressed so well that by June the ship was almost ready for launching. The Great Eastern had become the talk of Europe.

However, the optimism of the summer dissolved as endless difficulties connected with the launch arose. After much negotiation, a new launch date was agreed with Martin’s Bank for October 1857. If the ship was not in the Thames by this date, the creditors would claim the yard and ‘we will be in the hands of the Philistines,’ declared company secretary John Yates. The fifth of October arrived and Brunel, not satisfied that everything was ready for the launch, had no alternative but to defer the date once again. The mortgagees seized the yard and refused access to all working on the ship. The situation had become impossible. Brunel was now put under immense pressure to agree to launch on the next ‘spring tide’ of 3 November and the company was charged large fees for the delay.

As the Great Ship stood helplessly inert, waiting at the top of two launch-ways, her brooding shape invited much comment. Many thought she was unlaunchable and would rust where she was. Other wise ‘old salts’ predicted that if she ever did finally find the sea, the first wave would break her long back in half. Brunel never doubted; but no matter how carefully he planned the coming operation, there were still many unknowns and little time to test the equipment. In the small hours of the cold autumn nights it seemed he was attempting the impossible. He was proposing to move an unwieldy metal mountain more than four storeys high down a precarious slope towards a high tide with untried equipment.

The plan for launching the ship sounded simple. Hydraulic rams would gently persuade her down the launch-ways. Tugs in the river, under the command of Captain Harrison, could also ease her towards the river, and there were restraining chains to hold her back should she move too fast. Two wooden cradles, 120 feet wide, were supporting the ship and they rested on launch-ways of the same width. Iron rails were fixed to the launch-ways and iron bars 1 inch thick were attached to the base of the cradles and both surfaces were greased to enable the vessel to slide easily down the launch-way gradient.

As the spring tide of 3 November approached, work on the ship became more frenzied. At night, 1,500 men working by gaslight carried on with last minute instructions from Brunel. Brunel himself never left the yard, sleeping for a few hours when exhausted on a makeshift bed in a small wooden office. He issued special instructions to everyone involved with the launch, saying:

The success of the operation will depend entirely upon the perfect regularity and absence of all haste or confusion in each stage of the proceedings and in every department, and to attain this nothing is more essential than perfect silence. I would earnestly request, therefore, that the most positive orders be given to the men not to speak a word, and that every endeavour should be made to prevent a sound being heard, except the simple orders quietly and deliberately given by those few who will direct.

Unfortunately for Brunel, perfect silence was not a high priority with the board of the Eastern Steam Navigation Company. For months now, the company had borne the disastrous haemorrhage of enormous amounts of money into the Great Ship. The launching presented them with a small chance to recoup some of those losses. Unknown to Brunel, they had sold over 3,000 tickets to view the launch from Napier shipyard. Newspapers, too, had played their part, informing the public that an event worthy of comparison with the Colosseum was about to take place at Millwall. ‘Men and women of all classes were joined together in one amicable pilgrimage to the East,’ reported The Times. ‘For on that day at some hour unknown, the Leviathan was to be launched at Millwall … For two years, London – and we may add the people of England – had been kept in expectation of the advent of this gigantic experiment, and their excitement and determination to be present at any cost are not to be wondered at when we consider what a splendid chance presented itself of a fearful catastrophe.’

The launch place of the Leviathan presented a chaotic picture to Charles Dickens. ‘I am in an empire of mud … I am surrounded by muddy navigators, muddy engineers, muddy policemen, muddy clerks of works, muddy, reckless ladies, muddy directors, muddy secretaries and I become muddy myself.’ He noted that ‘a general spirit of reckless daring’ seemed to animate the ‘one hundred thousand souls’ crammed in and around the yard, upon the river and the opposite bank. ‘They delight in insecure platforms, they crowd on small, frail housetops, they come up in little cockleboats, almost under the bows of the Great Ship … many in that dense floating mass on the river and the opposite shore would not be sorry to experience the excitement of a great disaster.’

In the dull light of the November morning the scene that greeted Brunel as he emerged from his makeshift quarters was one of confusion and noise, with uncontrollable crowds swarming over his carefully placed launch equipment. All of fashionable London, displaying intense curiosity, expecting to be amused, charmed, and hopefully thrilled, was taking the air in Napier shipyard. Then, almost farcically, in the midst of preparations, a string of unexpected distinguished visitors turned up in all their finery, first the Comte de Paris and then, complete with a retinue resplendent in gold cloth, the ambassador of Siam. A half-hearted attempt at a launching ceremony saw the daughter of Mr Hope, the chairman of the board, offering the token bottle of champagne to the ship. Brunel refused to associate himself with it. She got the name wrong, christening the ship ‘Leviathan’, which nobody liked since all of London had already decided on the Great Eastern.

The whole colourful funfair scene was terribly at odds with the cold, clinically precise needs of the launching operation. Brunel felt betrayed, as he later told a friend: ‘I learnt to my horror that all the world was invited to “The Launch”, and that I was committed to it coûte que coûte. It was not right, it was cruel; and nothing but a sense of the necessity of calming all feelings that could disturb my mind enabled me to bear it.’

Brunel had no alternative but to make the attempt in spite of the difficulties. He stood high up on a wooden structure, against the hull, his slight figure wearing a worn air, stovepipe hat at an angle, habitual cigar in his mouth. He held a white flag in his hand, poised like a conductor waiting to begin the vast unknown music.

As his flag came down, the wedges were removed, the checking drum cables eased, and the winches on the barges mid-river took the strain. For what seemed an eternity, nothing happened. The crowd, which had been quiet, grew restive. Brunel decided to apply the power of the hydraulic presses. Suddenly, with thunderous reverberation, the bow cradle moved three feet before the team applied the brake lever on the forward checking drum. Immediately, accompanied by a rumbling noise, the stern of the great hull moved four feet. An excited cry went up from the crowd: ‘She moves! She moves!’ In an instant the massive cables of the aft checking drum were pulled tight, causing the winch handle to spin. As the winch handle ‘flew round like lightning’, it sliced into flesh and bone, and tossed the men who were working the drum into the air like flotsam. The price the team paid for not being entirely awake to the quickly changing situation was four men mutilated. Another man, the elderly John Donovan, sustained such fearful injuries he was considered a hopeless case and was taken to a nearby hospital where he soon died.

Later that afternoon, Brunel tried to move the hull once more but a string of minor accidents and the growing dark persuaded him to finish for the day. In the words of Brunel’s 17-year-old son Henry, ‘the whole yard was thrown into confusion by a struggling mob, and there was nothing to be done but to see that the ship was properly secured and wait till the following morning’.

The spring tide had come and gone, the next one was not for another month; another month of extortionate fees while the ship lay on the slipway. Brunel was determined to get the ship completely on to the launch-ways as soon as possible. He was very concerned that while the ship was half on the building slip (whose foundation was completely firm) and half on the launch-ways (which had more give) the bottom of the hull could be forced into a different shape. His urgent task was to get the ship well down the launch-ways to the water’s edge in case the hull started to sink into the Thames mud under its immense weight. The fiasco of 3 November at least provided information on how to manage the launch more effectively. Some alterations were made to improve the equipment and another attempt at the launch was made on the nineteenth. This was a huge disappointment with the hull moving just 1 inch. Clearly, more would have to be done.

The winches on the barges mid-river had been ineffective and all four were now mounted in the yard, their cables drawn under the hull and across to the barges; but even chains of great strength and size broke when any strain was put on them. ‘Dense fog made it almost impossible to work on the river,’ observed Henry Brunel. ‘Moreover, there seemed a fatality about every attempt to get a regular trial of any part of the tackle.’ Two more hydraulic presses were added to the original two, giving a force of 800 tons at full power.

By 28 November, Brunel felt confident enough to try to move the Great Ship once more. From a central position in the yard, Brunel signalled his instructions with a white flag. The hydraulic presses were brought up to full power and, to the accompaniment of terrifying sounds of cracking timber and the groaning and screeching of metal, slowly the ship moved at a rate of one inch per minute. As before, though, the tackle between the hull and the barges proved unreliable and Captain Harrison and his team found themselves endlessly repairing chains. In spite of the difficulties, by the end of the day the ship had been moved fourteen feet and there was renewed hope of floating the ship on the high tide of 2 December. An early start on 29 November saw the river tackle yet again let them down and the four hydraulic presses pushed to their maximum could not move the ship. Hydraulic jacks and screw jacks were begged and borrowed and by nightfall another 8 feet had been claimed so that by the thirtieth the ship had moved 33 feet in total and hope now had real meaning. But then one of the presses burst a cylinder, which killed off any possibility of a December launch.

Brunel would not be defeated though, and throughout December he carried on inching the colossal black ship down the launch-ways. Each day it was becoming more reluctant to start. ‘While the ship was in motion,’ noted Henry Brunel, ‘the whole of the ground forming the yard would perceptibly shake, or rather sway, on the discharge of power, stored up in the presses and their abutments.’ In the freezing fogs of December and January, the hundreds of workers were heard, rather than seen, as the yard echoed with the sounds of orders and endless hammering. The gangs sang to relieve their boredom as they mended the chains. At night, gas flares lit the scene and fires burned by the pumps and presses to stop them freezing up. With the small figures of the workers beneath the huge black shape in the mist, which was red from the many fires, it gave the impression that some unearthly ritual was being enacted on this bleak southerly bend in the Thames.

Brunel was coming to the conclusion that the pulling power he had hoped to obtain from the barges and tugs on the river was not going to be enough and that his best hope lay in providing much more power to push the ship into the river. The railway engineer, Robert Stephenson, a friend who had come to view the operation, agreed and orders were placed with a Birmingham firm, Tangye Bros, for hydraulic presses capable of much more power.

The whole country was following Brunel’s efforts to launch the reluctant ship and the press were increasingly critical. ‘Why do great companies believe in Mr Brunel?’ scoffed The Field. ‘If great engineering consists in effecting huge monuments of folly at enormous cost to share holders, then is Mr Brunel surely the greatest of engineers!’ There was no shortage of letters offering diverse advice. One reverend gentleman thought the best plan was to dig a trench up to the bows and then push the ship in. Another claimed that 500 troops marching at the double round the deck would set up vibrations that would move the vessel. Yet another idea was to float the ship to the river on cannon balls or even shoot cannon balls into the cradles. Scott Russell, too, aired his theories on just why the ship was ‘seizing up’ and reluctant to move. He suggested the two moving surfaces should have been wood not iron.

December and January were bitterly cold. By day, the ship looked mysterious in dense fogs; the nights were black as the river itself. Brunel stood alone against a background of criticism; his sheer unremitting determination to get the ship launched permeated every impulse. By early January, he had acquired eighteen hydraulic presses and they were placed nine at each of the cradles. It was thought that their combined power was more than 4,500 tons.

The new hydraulic presses were so successful that as the month advanced the Thames water was lapping her hull. The next high tide of the thirtieth was set for launch day. But the night of the twenty-ninth brought sheeting horizontal rain and a strong southwesterly wind. Brunel knew that if they got the ship launched, the difficulties of managing the craft in the shallow waters of the Thames, where at this point it was not much wider than the length of the ship, would be considerable in such high winds. Miraculously, though, 31 January was still and calm. The Thames shimmered like a polished surface.

At first light, Brunel started the launch process in earnest. Water which had been pumped into the ship the day before to hold her against the strong tide was now pumped out. The bolts were removed from wedges that were holding the ship. Nothing more could be done until the tide came up the river, which it did with surprising speed and force. Messengers were sent with desperate urgency to collect the men in order not to miss the opportunity which seemed to have arrived at last. The hydraulic presses were noisy with effort and the great Tangye’s rams hissed and pushed at the massive structure. Two hours of shoving and straining and tension down the last water-covered part of the launch-ways saw the vast iron stern afloat. The forward steam winch hauled and, quickly, the huge bow responded and moved with solemn deliberation into the water. There were no crowds to witness this defining moment; just a few curious onlookers there by accident as the colossal ship moved from one element to another. As the news spread, bells rang out across London as the Great Eastern floated for the first time.

Brunel, who had not slept for 60 hours, was able to board with his wife and son and at last could feel the movement of the ship as she responded to the currents of the Thames beneath her. Four tugs took the Great Eastern across the river to her Deptford mooring where she could now be fitted out. The cost of the launch was frightening – some estimates suggest as much as £1,000 per foot – and the ship had so far consumed £732,000, with Brunel putting in a great deal of his own money. But the cost to Brunel’s health was higher still. Over the past few months he had pushed himself to the limits of endurance. It seemed the Great Ship owned him in body and soul and gave him no relief from the endless difficulties of turning his original vision into a reality. Now that the Great Eastern was finally in the water after years, Brunel’s doctors insisted that he take a rest.

When Brunel returned in September 1858 he found that the Eastern Steam Navigation Company was in debt, that there was no money to fit the ship out and there was talk of selling her. The company tried to raise £172,000 to finish the work on the ship, but this proved impossible. The financial problems of the board were only resolved when they formed a new company, ‘the Great Ship Company’, which bought the Great Eastern for a mere £160,000, and allotted shares to shareholders of Eastern Steam in proportion to their original holding. Brunel was re-engaged as engineer and, with his usual energy, became busy with designs for every last detail, even the skylights and rigging. Yet he was harassed now with health problems and doctors diagnosed his recurring symptoms as ‘Bright’s disease’, with progressive damage to his kidneys. They insisted that he must spend the winter relaxing in a warmer climate. The last thing Brunel wanted was to leave his Great Ship when there was still so much to supervise. Reluctantly, he agreed to travel to Egypt with his wife and son, Henry.

Before he left, with memories of the impossible position that the board had faced when dealing with Scott Russell, he urged them to ensure that any contract they entered into for fitting out the ship was absolutely binding. However, with Brunel abroad and clearly unwell, the board, left with bringing to completion such a unique vessel, opted for the devil they knew. Scott Russell had built the hull and he was building the paddle engines. He was, after Brunel, the man who knew most about the Great Ship. It was not long before the charming, charismatic Scott Russell with his delightfully low-priced, somewhat ambiguous contract was back on board.

In May 1859, Brunel returned. The enforced holiday appeared to have been beneficial and his friends were hopeful that he was fully recovered. Privately, he knew this was not the case. His doctors had made it quite clear that his disease was progressing relentlessly. Only so much time was left for him and he should certainly not overexert himself. Yet, for Brunel, rest was out of the question. Whatever private bargain he may have made with himself, it proved impossible for him to resist the pull of the Great Eastern. His ship came first, whatever the cost.

With the maiden voyage planned for September, all Brunel could see was the enormous amount still needing to be done. So he rented a house near the ship and, with his usual energy, dealt daily with the many problems that needed his expert attention. Everything from the engine room to the rigging was checked; the best price of coal ascertained; the crew for the sea trials named; progress reports on the screw engines prepared; notes for Captain Harrison; advice on the decoration in the grand saloon: nothing escaped his practised eye. On 8 August 1859, a grand dinner was given for MPs and members of the House of Lords in the richly gilded rococo saloon but Brunel was too exhausted to attend. It was a glamorous occasion and, in Brunel’s absence, Scott Russell rose to it, shining in the glowing approbation of the distinguished audience.

On 5 September, Brunel was back on board his ship. He had chosen his cabin for the maiden voyage and stood for a moment on deck by the gigantic main mast while the photographer recorded the event. He had lost weight; his face was thinner, his clothes hung on him. In one hand he held a stick to help him get about; his shoes were clean and polished. He had a fragile, expended air. As he looked at the camera – his eyes, as always, concentrating, absorbed in some distant prospect – he looked like a man with little time left. Just two hours later he collapsed with a stroke. He was still conscious as his colleagues carried him very carefully to his private coach and slowly drove him home to Duke Street as though he were breakable.

The Great Eastern made her way alone now, without Brunel’s attention, directed by fussing tugs down the Thames to Purfleet in Essex and beyond for her sea trials. Once out to sea, she was magnificent. ‘She met the waves rolling high from the Bay of Biscay,’ reported The Times. ‘The foaming surge seemed but sportive elements of joy over which the new mistress of the ocean held her undisputed sway.’

With Brunel lying paralysed at home in Duke Street, Captain Harrison was now in charge, but his command was diluted as the engine trials took place. The two engine rooms were supervised by the representatives of the firms responsible for the engines; Scott Russell put his man Dixon in charge of the paddle engine room. Brunel had designed many new and innovative features for the smoother running of his ship, some of which those in charge were neither familiar with nor even aware existed. No one had the same intimate understanding of the complex workings of the ship as Brunel and if his familiar figure had been on board, in total charge with his boundless energy and sharp mind directing proceedings, it is possible the accident would never have happened.

The Great Eastern was steaming along, just off Hastings, cutting smoothly through the waves and making light work of the choppy seas that were tossing the smaller boats dangerously around her. Passengers on board had left the glittering chandeliered saloon to dine; a hardier group had gathered in the bow to view the distant land. Suddenly, without warning, there was a deafening roar that seemed to come from deep within the bowels of the ship, and the forward funnel was wrenched up and shot 50 feet in the air, accompanied by a huge cloud of steam under pressure. Up in the air was tossed the forward part of the deck and all the glitter and glory of the saloon in the catastrophic eruption. Passengers were stunned, almost blinded by the white cloud of steam, and then the debris came crashing down.

Captain Harrison seized a rope and lowered himself down through the steam into the wreck of the grand saloon. He found his own little daughter, who by a miracle had escaped unhurt. The accident, it was clear, was in the paddle engine room, which had suddenly been filled with pressurised steam. Several dazed stokers emerged on deck with faltering steps, their faces fixed in intense astonishment, their skins a livid white. ‘No one who had ever seen blown up men before could fail to know that some had only two or three hours to live,’ reported The Times. ‘A man blown up by gunpowder is a mere figure of raw flesh, which seldom moves after the explosion. Not so men who are blown up by steam, who for a few minutes are able to walk about, apparently almost unhurt, though in fact, mortally injured beyond all hope of recovery.’ Since they could walk, at first it was hoped that their injuries were not life threatening. But they had met the full force of the pressurised steam; they had effectively been boiled alive. One man was quite oblivious to the fact that deep holes had been burnt into the flesh of his thighs. A member of the crew went to assist another of the injured and, catching him by the arm, watched the skin peel off like an old glove. Yet another stoker running away from the hell below leapt into the sea, only to meet his death in the blades of the paddle wheel.

‘A number of beds were pulled to pieces for the sake of the soft white wool they contained,’ reported Household Words,

and when the half-boiled bodies of the poor creatures were anointed with oil, they were covered over with this wool and made to lie down. They were nearly all stokers and firemen, whose faces were black with their work, and one man who was brought in had patches of red raw flesh on his dark, agonised face, like dabs of red paint, and the skin of his arms was hanging from his hands like a pair of tattered mittens … As they lay there with their begrimed faces above the coverlets, and their chests covered with the strange woolly coat that had been put upon their wounds, they looked like wild beings of another country whose proper fate it was to labour and suffer differently from us.

Among the crew, the fate of the riveter and his boy, locked alive in the hull years before, resurfaced, with prophesies of worse to come.

The Great Ship sailed confidently on, her engines pounding, not even momentarily stopped in her tracks, just as her designer envisaged. Such an accident would have foundered any other ship. The stunned passengers were at a loss to know what had happened, and were totally unaware that the whole explosive performance could be repeated at any minute with a second funnel. The accident had been caused by a forgotten detail: a stopcock had been inadvertently turned off, allowing a water jacket in the forward funnel to explode under pressure. There was a similar stopcock also affecting a second funnel – also switched off, also building up enormous pressure. By a miracle, one of Scott Russell’s men from the paddle engine room realised what had happened and sent a greaser to open the second stopcock. A great column of steam was released and the danger passed.

Twelve men had been injured; five men were dead. An inquest was held in Weymouth in Dorset. It proved difficult to ascertain just who had responsibility for the stopcock. Scott Russell, smoothly evasive, claimed that he had been on board merely in an advisory capacity and that the paddle engines and all connected with them were the total responsibility of the Great Ship Company. ‘I had nothing whatever directly or indirectly to do,’ he said. ‘I went out of personal interest and invited Dixon as my friend.’ He claimed he had ‘volunteered his assistance only when it became obvious to him that the officers in charge were having difficulty in handling the ship’. All the other witnesses also disclaimed responsibility. There were, however, passengers on the ship who insisted that they had heard Scott Russell ‘give at least a hundred orders from the bridge to the engine room’. The truth, though, was undiscoverable, lost somewhere in the maze of evidence from the variously interested parties. Accidental death was the verdict from the jury.

At his home in Duke Street, Brunel, a shadow but still clinging to life, was waiting patiently through the dull days for word of the sea trials. Paralysed, he lay silently, hoping for good news, hoping so much to hear of her resounding success. Instead, he was told of the huge explosion at sea and the terrible damage to the ship. It was a shock from which he could not recover. It was not the right news for a man with such a fragile hold on life. He died on 15 September, just six days after the explosion on his beloved Great Eastern, still a relatively young man at the age of 53.

The country mourned his loss; the papers eulogised. A familiar brilliant star was suddenly out. ‘In the midst of difficulties of no ordinary kind,’ said the president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Joseph Locke, ‘and with an ardour rarely equalled, and an application both of body and mind almost beyond the limit of physical endurance in the full pursuit of a great and cherished idea, Brunel was suddenly struck down, before he had accomplished the task which his daring genius had set before him.’

With her creator gone, the Great Ship put in to Weymouth on the south coast for repairs that would bring her up to Board of Trade requirements. While work was in progress, sightseers at 2s 6d per head came in their thousands to wonder and whisper if the ship was damned. Was there not a story about a riveter and his boy and bad luck? Since the repairs took longer than expected the company postponed plans for the maiden voyage until the following spring and, as the sightseers had proved financially successful, the Great Ship steamed on to Holyhead in Anglesey, Wales, to find some more.

While there she encountered a fearsome storm with gale force winds and rivers of rain. The crashing waves broke the skylights, deluged the ship and ruined the décor in the grand saloon. Captain Harrison realised she had lost her mooring chains and was at the mercy of the storm. He ordered the engineer to start the paddle engines and, by skilfully keeping her head into the wind, the Great Eastern rode out the storm that saw many wrecked around her. Nearby, the steamship Royal Charter went down with 446 lives, further evidence that the Great Eastern was unsinkable as her creator had claimed. It was decided that Southampton would be a more sheltered port for the winter.

It was, however, a troubled winter for the Great Eastern and those connected with her. At a special shareholders’ meeting, the news that there was a mortgage of £40,000 attached to the ship and the company was over £36,000 in debt led to angry calls for the directors to resign. A new board of directors led by Brunel’s friend, Daniel Gooch, was voted in. They issued shares in the hope of raising £100,000 to complete the ship but doubts were raised over the terms of the contract with Scott Russell and, above all, how £353,957 had been expended on a ship still not fit for sea. Once again, Scott Russell’s loosely defined estimate for fitting out the ship had been wildly exceeded. The services of Scott Russell were finally dispensed with and Daniel Gooch was elected chief engineer.

Yet more bad luck seemed to haunt those connected with the ship. One January day in the winter of 1860, Captain Harrison with some members of the crew set out from Hythe pier on Southampton Water to reach the Great Eastern in a small boat. As they left the shelter of the land, they were hit by a sudden violent squall. The tide was very high with choppy, dangerous seas. Harrison ordered the sail down, but the wet sail would not budge. The rest occurred in just a minute. The wind hit the sail and turned the boat over. Captain Harrison, always cool and collected, made repeated attempts to right the boat, but it kept coming up keel first. Buffeted by wild and stifling seas, he seemed almost powerless. Very quickly, the sea claimed the ship’s boy, the coxswain, and master mariner Captain Harrison himself. The Great Eastern had lost her captain hand-picked by Brunel.

Almost two years had elapsed since the launch and the ship had still not made a trip to Australia as originally planned. With the continued shortage of funds this was difficult to finance and, instead, the Great Ship Company decided to sail her as a luxury liner on the Atlantic. In June 1860, the Great Eastern finally sailed for New York on her maiden voyage. On board were just 38 passengers, who marvelled at the great ship, fascinated by the massive engines, the imposing public rooms, the acres of sail. Despite the small number of people on board, they were in champagne mood, enjoying dancing, musicals and a band and strolling the wide deck as they walked to America with hardly a roll from the Great Eastern. The crew, 418 strong, took her across the Atlantic as though she were crossing a millpond.

‘It is a beautiful sight to look down from the prow of this great ship at midnight’s dreary hour, and watch the wondrous facility with which she cleaves her irresistible way through the waste of waters,’ reported The Times. ‘A fountain, playing about 10 feet high before her stem, is all the broken water to be seen around her; for owing to the great beauty of her lines, she cuts the waves with the ease and quietness of a knife; her motion being just sufficient to let you know that you have no dead weight beneath your feet, but a ship that skims the waters like a thing of life …’

When she reached New York, on 27 June, people turned out in their thousands to view her; they packed the wharfs, the docks, the houses. ‘They were in every spot where a human being could stand,’ observed Daniel Gooch. A 21-gun salute was fired and the ecstatic crowds roared their approval. All night in the moonlight, people tried to board her and the next day an impromptu fairground had gathered selling Great Eastern lemonade and oysters and sweets. Over the next month, the streets were choked with sightseers and the hotels were full as people were drawn from all over America to view this great wonder. The Great Eastern was the toast of New York. Her future as a passenger ship seemed assured.

In the mid-nineteenth century, sea travel was hazardous. Many ships were lost but the Great Eastern was proving to be unsinkable. Confidence in her was rising. She had survived the terrible ‘Royal Charter storm’ and, with her double hull and transverse and longitudinal watertight bulkheads, she would laugh at rough weather. It was thought her hull was longer than the trough of the greatest storm wave.

And so it was with a mood of great optimism that the Great Eastern left Liverpool under full sail on 10 September 1861, in such soft summer weather that some of her 400 passengers were singing and dancing on deck. The next morning was grey with a stiff breeze blowing spray. By lunchtime they were meeting strong winds and heavy seas and by the afternoon, when they were 300 miles out in the Atlantic, the winds were gale force. ‘She begins to roll very heavily and ship many seas,’ wrote one anxious passenger. ‘None but experienced persons can walk about. The waves are as high as Primrose Hill.’

With waves breaking right over the ship, the Great Eastern soon leaned to such an extent that the port paddle wheel was submerged. The captain, James Walker, became aware of a sound of machinery crashing and scraping from the paddle wheel. Clinging on to the rails, he lowered himself towards the ominous sounds. As the Great Ship lurched through the waves and the paddle wheel was flung under water, Walker was pulled into the sea right up to his neck. When he got a chance to investigate he could see planks splitting, girders bending and the wheel scraping the side of the ship so badly that it looked as though it might hole her. Somehow, he clambered back to the bridge and gave the order to stop the paddle engines. But without these, the screw engines alone could not provide enough power to control the ship’s movement in what was fast turning into a hurricane.

As the ship rolled, the lifeboats were broken up and thrown into the foaming water by the furious waves. One lifeboat near the starboard paddle wheel was hanging from its davit and dancing about in a crazy fashion. It was damaging the paddle wheel, so Captain Walker had it cut away and ordered the starboard engines reversed to ensure the rejected boat did not harm the paddle further. The ship was wallowing and plunging at an angle of 45 degrees in the deep valleys of water, with overwhelming mountainous seas on either side. Walker was desperate to turn the ship into the wind, but before he could the paddle wheels were swept away by a huge wave.

Terrifying sounds were coming from the rudder, which had been twisted back by the heavy seas. It was out of control and was crashing rhythmically into the 36-ton propeller, which was somehow still turning. With the loss of steerage from the broken rudder it was quite impossible to turn the ship. And then the screw engines stopped. The ship was now without power and completely at the mercy of the elements. An attempt was made to hoist some sail, but the furious gale tore it to shreds.

Below decks, madness reigned. In the grand saloon, chairs, tables and the grand piano were smashing themselves to pieces. Rich furnishings were shredded. The large cast-iron stove came loose and charged lethally into mirrors, showering fragments of glass everywhere and snapping the elegant decorative columns in half. Among this were passengers trying to dodge the furniture and cling for dear life to something stable. Water roared and torrented in through the broken skylights. At one moment, two cows from the cow pen on deck and some hens were thrown in with the deluge. A swan, which was trying to take off, battered itself to death. The cabins were smashed and soaked as water poured below deck. The ship’s doctor was busy treating 27 passengers with serious fractures, not least the ship’s baker who had managed to break his leg in three places.

For the whole of the following day the hurricane continued to blow and the Great Eastern shipped even more water. A four-ton spar loaded down with iron was put overboard in the hope it would act as a drag and give some control to the seemingly doomed ship. It was soon torn away. By now, the water that was still coming in through portholes and skylights and finding its way below deck was overwhelming the pumps. Ominous thumping and crashing were heard from the holds where nothing had been secured and ruined goods were flung from side to side with the water in the hold, battering the hull. No one had eaten for 48 hours. The situation looked hopeless.

In the evening, an attempt was made to secure the wildly gyrating rudder, still battering itself uncontrollably into the propeller and gradually being torn apart. Heavy chains were eventually wound round the broken steering shaft and made fast, so that the rudder at last became stationary. A sailor was found to brave the seas, and was lowered on a boatswain’s chair to the rudder where, in spite of terrifying conditions, he managed to loop a chain round the rudder and through the screw opening. At last, with two chains attached to the rudder, a very primitive means of steering was established. It was now possible to start the screw engines and slowly make it back to Milford Haven in Wales.

When land finally came into view, the passengers, wild with excitement, began an impromptu celebration in the ruined saloon. Limping into harbour with the band playing, the Great Eastern had survived. Everyone on board was quite sure no other ship could possibly have done so. She was, indeed, unsinkable. The grateful passengers disembarked, one woman so overwhelmed that she fainted. But the bill for the damage, which took months to repair, was £60,000. The company was in debt again.

By the summer of 1862, the Great Eastern was making regular, successful and uneventful trips to New York with a new captain, Walter Paton. In August, she embarked once again with a full cargo and 1,500 passengers and, although the ship met with yet another bad storm, Captain Paton stayed on the bridge and battled through it at full power. They reached New York on a night of calm waters and silver moonlight. The ship took on the pilot off Long Island and proceeded through the narrow channel to dock. During this final length of the journey a deep rumbling sound was heard; the ship faltered and then recovered. No damage could be found. Next day at anchor, the captain sent a diver down who discovered a great gash, 85 feet long and 5 feet wide, on the flat bottom of the outer hull. The inner hull was untouched. Brunel’s double hull had saved the ship. She had collected this awful wound from an uncharted needle of rock that came within 25 feet of the surface.

Captain Paton was a long way from Milford Haven where the ship could be put on a gridiron for repairs. He did not want to chance a journey back across the Atlantic at a time of equinoctial gales with a hull so badly ruptured, but there was no facility in America where she could be repaired and no dry dock big enough to take her. Even if he could beach her massive hull somewhere in North America, the long gash was in the flat bottom of the ship and impossible to repair.

Shipbuilders in North America were intrigued by the challenge of repairing the vast ship, but no one had an answer until a civil engineer called Edward Renwick and his brother, Henry, offered their services. Neither man inspired confidence. Both had only partial sight and were inclined to grope their way around furniture. However, they were confident, in spite of their disabilities, that they could repair the ship. Their plan was to build a watertight cofferdam over the long gash, enabling work to be completed in the dry.

Their project was accepted and templates were made from the inner hull. The space between the hulls was calculated, which then gave the exact shape of the outer hull. The riveters were to conduct their job from inside the ship by making their way down a dark shaft to the gash in the hull and many needed some persuading to trust the temporary cofferdam clamped on to the big ship’s hull. One day panic grew as knocking was heard in the double hull. Rumours spread quickly and the riveters became adamant that a ghost was hammering. They downed tools and refused to work as long as the banging continued.

The captain was called. He, too, heard the ghost ‘pounding on the hull’. Work was stopped. Fear infiltrated the ship like mist. Every inch of the bilge was inspected. The hammering was coming from below the waterline, so Captain Paton inspected the outside of the hull in a small boat. There, the ‘ghost’ was discovered: a loose chain knocking the side of the ship as it rose and dipped in the swell.

The work was finished in December 1862 and Edward and Henry Renwick presented their bill for £70,000. The insurance firm refused to pay. The company had now lost £130,000 in the last two years. When the Great Eastern arrived back in England she spent months on a gridiron while Board of Trade inspectors reviewed the work of the Renwick brothers. She made three more trips across the Atlantic, lost another £20,000 and was then beached again while the board considered the situation. Despite their efforts, the board had failed to make their fortunes from the unique vessel and even while she was on her gridiron in some lonely cove, like a great sea creature thrown up on to the beach and forgotten, she was still silently absorbing funds. The company decided to sell their one asset. The Great Eastern was auctioned in January 1864 for the disappointing sum of £25,000.

Far from being finished, however, the Great Eastern was on the threshold of a completely new career. The chairman of the new company was Daniel Gooch and he had never lost faith in Brunel’s great ship. He immediately chartered the Great Eastern to the Atlantic Telegraph Company for £50,000 of cable shares. It was their intention to lay cable across the ocean from Ireland to America. There had already been an unsuccessful attempt to lay cable by a wealthy American businessman, Cyrus Field. He was quite sure that it was possible to make the cable link between the two continents as the sea floor between Newfoundland and Ireland was plateau-like and not too deep.

The Great Eastern was stripped of all her finery and prepared for cable-laying. The grand saloon and palatial first-class cabins were thrown aside to house the miles of cable and the machinery that would deliver it to the ocean. And in July 1865, with Daniel Gooch on board, she began her next venture.

Daniel Gooch knew Brunel had designed a strong and magnificent ship that had come through adversity time and again. He felt her worth would at last be realised. The success of the venture, he declared, ‘will open out a useful future for our noble ship, lift her out of the depression under which she has laboured from her birth and satisfy me that I have done wisely in never losing confidence in her’.

Despite his enthusiasm, he, too, soon ran into problems. On 2 August 1865, after successfully laying out 1,000 miles of cable across the Atlantic, it broke and disappeared to fall 2,000 fathoms into the faceless ocean, which offered no clues or help. ‘All our labour and anxiety is lost,’ despaired Daniel Gooch. ‘We are now dragging to see if we can by chance recover it, but of this I have no hope, nor have I heart to wish. I shall be glad if I can sleep and for a few hours forget I live … This one thing upon which I had set my heart more than any other work I was ever engaged on, is dead.’ The ship returned, defeated, having lost £700,000 worth of cable.

From defeat, once again, optimism blossomed and in July 1866, after reviewing the mistakes of the previous year, the ship sailed again with stronger cable and improved machinery. This time success was the reward as the ship put in to Hearts Content Bay, Newfoundland. Daniel Gooch sent a telegram back to the Old World: ‘Our shore end has just been laid and a most perfect cable …’ And when in September returning home they reached the approximate position of the previous year’s lost cable, they put the improved grappling gear to work and, by some small miracle, found and recovered it. Success now seemed assured and Daniel Gooch estimated that the company would be nearly £400,000 a year better off. For the next three years, the Great Eastern laid cable all over the world, from France to America, Bombay to the Red Sea and a fourth cable to America, as well as completing repair work on previously laid cable. In 1874, however, her cable-laying days were over with the launch of a custom built ship, the Faraday, produced especially for the sole task of cable-laying.

Now the Great Eastern presented the company with a problem. No one had ever made money from her as a passenger ship. She had been designed originally to steam halfway round the world to Australia where, with 4,000 passengers and enough fuel for the return journey, she would have presented strong competition for sailing ships and made a fortune. But the Suez Canal was now in operation and the Great Eastern was just too large to use it. Any journey she now made to Australia would not be competitive and she was always considered too large to be economic on the Atlantic run.

She spent twelve quiet years, largely forgotten, on the gridiron at Milford Haven, a gentle dilapidation settling on her like a mould. Suggestions were made for her future, perhaps as a hospital or hotel, but they came to nothing. She was auctioned in 1885 for £26,000 to a coal haulier, Edward de Mattos. He leased her for a year to a well-known Liverpool draper, Louis Cohen, who proposed to turn her into a showboat for the exhibition of manufactures.

The old ship was goaded into life, but her paddle engines were eaten up with rust and unusable. Even her screw engines were stiff and reluctant as she slowly made her way to Liverpool, to be turned into some sort of funfair decked with advertisements. Trapeze artists dived from the rigging. The grand saloon became a music hall. Coconut shies vied with ‘what the butler saw’. Beer halls, conjurors, knife throwers and all the fun of the fair brought in a profit for Mr Cohen. ‘Poor old ship, you deserved a better fate,’ Daniel Gooch wrote in his diary on hearing the news, adding, ‘I would much rather the ship was broken up than turned to such base uses.’

When Mr Cohen’s lease expired, Mr de Mattos tried to repeat his success, but it seems he did not have enough of the circus in his blood to pull it off. So, in 1888, after due consideration, the ship which had cost well over a million pounds to build, maintain and repair was auctioned for scrap for the meagre sum of £16,000.

The still magnificent ship, and all the dreams she carried of everyone connected with her, was taken to the scrapyard at Birkenhead to be demolished. At first, it looked as though the breakers would make a tidy profit. They estimated that they could sell the iron plates and various metals for £58,000, but with the Great Eastern making a profit was never a foregone conclusion and, true to her history, she made a loss. Demolition proved cripplingly expensive, as human hands were not enough to pick the immensely strong hull to pieces. This was a ship designed for strength by her creator, a ship that had survived the full fury of Atlantic storms. It took some 200 men working night and day for two years, swinging demolition balls and anything else they could find to pole-axe her obstinate refusal to be metamorphosed into so many tons of scrap. Slowly the layers of metal were peeled away, the outer skin of the hull, the inner hull, the organs of the engine and all the intimately connecting shafts and pistons, until one day where she had stood was just space.

As for the riveter and his boy, entombed alive in the double hull, rumours persisted that their skeletons were indeed found. According to James Dugan, author of The Great Iron Ship in 1953, there was one witness: a Captain David Duff who at the time was a cabin boy. He claimed to have visited the wrecker’s yard and wrote: ‘They found a skeleton inside the ship’s shell and the tank tops. It was the skeleton of the basher who was missing. Also the frame of the bash boy was found with him. And so there you are Sir, that’s all I can tell you about the Great Eastern.’ But the local papers of the time bear no record of this extraordinary story and the captain’s account has never been authenticated. For the time being, the mystery of whether or not the basher and his mate were entombed remains unsolved.

It is wrong to blame the ill fortune that seemed to haunt the Great Eastern on some evil-spirited ghosts. She was way ahead of her time and was to remain the largest ship in the world until the Lusitania of 1906 and later the Titanic. But in the mid-nineteenth century there were few harbours where the Great Eastern could dock and this fact alone limited her success. She was specifically designed for taking large numbers of people to Australia, but this never happened. Those who managed her have been criticised for their insistence on using her for the luxury market to the United States at a time when there was just too much competition on this route. If she had sailed to New York from Liverpool with a full complement of emigrants and brought back cotton or wheat, she could have made £45,000 per round trip. Eight hundred thousand emigrants left Europe for the United States in the Civil War years.

Had her creator lived beyond the age of 53 then perhaps he would have been able to steer his ship towards profitability. But Isambard Kingdom Brunel was gone and, in 1890, his dream disappeared, too. Only the spirit of the man lived on. His friend Daniel Gooch wrote on Brunel’s death, ‘the greatest of England’s engineers was lost, the man with the greatest originality of thought and power of execution, bold in his plans but right. The commercial world thought him extravagant; but although he was so, great things are not done by those who sit down and count the cost of every thought and act.’