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The SS Great Britain was an advanced Atlantic liner designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Steamship Company’s Bristol-New York service.

While other ships had been built of iron or had been equipped with a screw propeller, Great Britain was the first to combine these features in a large ocean-going ship. When launched in 1843, she was the largest vessel afloat. However her protracted construction and high cost left her owners in a difficult financial position, and they were forced out of business in 1846 when the Great Britain was stranded by a navigational error. Sold for salvage and repaired, she carried thousands of immigrants to Australia until converted to sail in 1881. Three years later, Great Britain was retired to the Falkland Islands where she was a warehouse and coal hulk until she was scuttled in 1937.[1]

In 1970, the ss Great Britain was returned to the Bristol dry dock where she was first built. Brunel’s ss Great Britain is now an award-winning visitor attraction and museum ship in Bristol Harbour, with between 150,000-170,000 visitors annually.

Development

After the initial success of its first liner, the SS Great Western of 1838, the Great Western Steamship Company collected materials for a sister ship, tentatively named the City of New York. The company’s chief engineer, Isambard Brunel convinced the directors to build an entirely different ship, an iron-hulled steamer of unusually large dimensions designed by Brunel, Thomas Guppy, Christopher Claxton and William Patterson. Construction proceeded in a specially adapted dry dock in Bristol, England.

Launch

The launching or, more accurately, the “floating out” took place on 19 July 1843. Conditions were generally favourable but diarists recorded that, after a dull start, the weather brightened later on with only a few intermittent showers. The atmosphere of the day can best be gauged from a report published the following day in the Bristol Mirror.

The reporter recorded that “large crowds started to gather early in the day including many people who had travelled to Bristol to see the spectacle. There was a general atmosphere of anticipation as the Royal Emblem was unfurled. The processional route had been cleaned and Temple Street decorated with flags, banners, flowers and ribbons. Boys of the City School and girls of Red Maids were stationed in a neat orderly formation down the entire length of the Exchange.

The route was a mass of colour and everybody was out on the streets as it was a public holiday. The atmosphere of gaiety even allowed thoughts to drift away from the problems of political dissension in London.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

8 Responses

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