What was the SS Great Eastern used for?
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Although designed to carry emigrants on the far Eastern run, the only passenger voyages "Great Eastern" made were in the Atlantic. Angus Buchanan, an historian of technology comments: "She was designed for the Far Eastern trade, but there was never sufficient traffic to put her into this. Instead, she was used in the transatlantic business, where she could not compete in speed and performance with similar vessels already in service."
SS Great Eastern
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In 1863 "Great Eastern" made three voyages to New York, with 2,700 passengers being carried out and 970 back to Britain along with a large tonnage of cargo. One of her paddle wheels was damaged on the last outward trip and she completed it using her screw, while on the return journey she ran down and damaged "Jane", a small sailing ship. The company lost nearly £20,000 on the voyages due to a price war between the Cunard and Inman shipping lines, and ended up with debts of more than £142,000, which forced them to lay up "Great Eastern".
SS Great Eastern
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SS "Great Eastern" was an iron sailing steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and built by J. Scott Russell & Co. at Millwall Iron Works on the River Thames, London. She was by far the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers from England to Australia without refuelling. Her length of was only surpassed in 1899 by the 17,274-gross-ton RMS "Oceanic", her gross tonnage of 18,915 was only surpassed in 1901 by the 21,035-gross-ton RMS "Celtic", and her 4,000-passenger capacity was surpassed in 1913 by the 4,935-passenger SS "Imperator". The ship's five funnels were rare. These were later reduced to four.
SS Great Eastern
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The SS "Great Eastern" was launched in 1858 and was six times bigger than any ship before. She was the third ship designed by Brunel. The "Great Eastern" had six masts as well as coal fired engines driving paddle wheels. It was designed to carry enough coal to travel to Australia and return, and was intended to carry 4,000 passengers (or 10,000 soldiers). Work started on the ship in 1854 but there were many problems in building and launching the ship. After fitting out at Deptford she undertook trials in September 1859 but the heater attached to the paddle engine boilers exploded. As the ship had been fitted with watertight bulkheads she survived and was repaired. Because of the opening of the Suez Canal, she was not used on the Australian route as envisaged but on the Atlantic crossings. Passengers did not like the rolling in storms and she was sold to a cable laying company after only six years. The "Great Eastern" was used to lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable and many others subsequently. She was broken up in 1888.
Maritime history of the United Kingdom
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Upon "Great Eastern's" return to England, the ship was chartered by the British Government to transport troops to Quebec. 2,144 officers and men, 473 women and children, and 200 horses were embarked at Liverpool along with 40 paying passengers. The ship sailed on 25 June 1861 and went at full speed throughout most of the trip arriving at her destination 8 days and 6 hours after leaving Liverpool. "Great Eastern" stayed for a month and returned to Britain at the beginning of July with 357 paying passengers.
SS Great Eastern
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An early example of breaking-up a structure by use of a wrecking ball, she was scrapped at New Ferry on the River Mersey by Henry Bath & Son Ltd in 1889–1890 – it took 18 months to take her apart. At the time Everton Football Club were looking for a flagpole for their Anfield ground, and consequently purchased her top mast. It still stands there today at the ground - now owned by Liverpool Football Club (formed 1892), at the Kop end. In 2011, the Channel 4 programme "Time Team" found geophysical survey evidence to suggest that residual iron parts from the ship's keel and lower structure still reside in the foreshore.
During 1859, when "Great Eastern" was off Portland conducting trials, an explosion aboard blew off one of the funnels. The funnel was salvaged and subsequently purchased by the water company supplying Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in Dorset, UK, and used as a filtering device. It was later transferred to the Bristol Maritime Museum close to Brunel's SS "Great Britain" then moved to the SS "Great Britain" museum.
SS Great Eastern
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After their use by the British Army ended in 1922, they were purchased by the Great Eastern Railway and moved to Harwich where the landing stage was re-erected to provide a service to Zeebrugge in conjunction with the Belgian Government through a joint company, the Great Eastern Train Ferry Company. The Great Eastern Railway was taken over by the London and North Eastern Railway company in 1923 with its interest in the Great Eastern Train Ferry Company. The new service was inaugurated on 24 April 1924 by Prince George, Duke of Kent.
SS Train Ferry No. 1
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Dudley's watercolor depicts a large piece of cable-laying machinery on the rear deck of the iron sail steamer "SS Great Eastern". The machinery was used to lay (also referred to as "paying out") the first transatlantic undersea cable. Upon its completion in 1866, the cable allowed telegraph messages to be sent across the Atlantic; these took minutes to travel between North America and Europe as opposed to the 10 days it took for contemporary mail carriers to make the crossing.
The Paying-out Machinery in the Stern of the Great Eastern
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"Great Eastern's" keel was laid down on 1 May 1854. The hull was an all-iron construction, a double hull of wrought iron in plates with ribs every . Internally, the hull was divided by two long, high, longitudinal bulkheads and further transverse bulkheads dividing the ship into nineteen compartments. "Great Eastern" was the first ship to incorporate the double-skinned hull, a feature which would not be seen again in a ship for several decades, but which is now compulsory for reasons of safety.
SS Great Eastern
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It was discovered that the rock had opened a gash in the ship's outer hull over wide and long. The enormous size of "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, caisson to cover the gash, held in place by chains around the ship's hull. The brothers claimed that it would take two weeks to complete the repairs and said that they would only take payment if successful. The demands of the American Civil War caused delays in getting the iron plates required, and instead of two weeks the repairs took three months at a cost to the company of £70,000. The ship finally sailed from New York for Liverpool on 6 January 1863.
SS Great Eastern