THE “GREAT EASTERN,” 1857.
The Great Eastern.—The British Government having in 1853 advertised for tenders to carry the mails to India and Australia, a number of wealthy and scientific men formed themselves into a company called the Eastern Steam Navigation Company, with a capital of £1,200,000, and sent in a tender, but it was not accepted.[10] The company, however, resolved to build a fleet of steamers, of which the Great Eastern was to be the first. Mr. Brunel, who had designed the Great Britain, was selected as the architect, and Mr. Scott Russell, as the builder of the pioneer ship. The proposal suited Mr. Brunel’s sanguine temperament, and he recommended the building of a monster iron steamship, that should eclipse all previous efforts in marine architecture, a vessel that should run, say, to Ceylon at an average speed of fifteen knots, and carry coal enough to take her out and home again. From Ceylon smaller boats would continue the service to India and Australia. The embodiment of Mr. Brunel’s magnificent conception was the Great Eastern, skilfully wrought out, but destined to prove a gigantic failure.
This extraordinary ship was commenced at Millwall on the Thames, in May, 1854, and was completed in 1857, at a cost of nearly £5,000,000. When ready for launching, her estimated weight was some 12,000 tons. As no such load had ever before slid down the ways of a shipyard, every precaution and appliance that skill could suggest were brought into requisition. She was to be hauled down, broadside on, by an elaborate arrangement of chains and stationary engines; but when the critical moment arrived the ponderous mammoth would not budge, and it cost something like £600,000 and constant labour for three months before she reached her destined element. The Great Eastern was 692 feet long, 83 feet in width, and 58½ feet deep. She was reckoned at 22,500 tons burthen. Her four engines were collectively of 11,000 indicated horse-power. She was fitted up in grand style to accommodate 4,800 passengers. As a troop-ship she could carry comfortably an army of 10,000 men in addition to her own crew of 400. She was provided with both paddle-wheels and a screw-propeller. The wheels were fifty feet in diameter, making twelve revolutions per minute; the four-bladed screw was twenty-four feet in diameter, adapted for forty-five revolutions per minute. Her estimated speed was fifteen knots, but her best average never exceeded twelve knots. Her first voyage from Southampton to New York was made in 10 days and 21 hours; the highest speed by the log was fourteen and a half knots, and the greatest day’s run three hundred and thirty-three knots. Her arrival in New York, June 27th, 1860, created a great sensation. Fort Hamilton saluted her with a discharge of fourteen guns—the first instance of a merchant vessel being thus honoured in America. She returned home via Halifax, making the run thence to Milford Haven in 10 days and 4 hours. In May, 1861, she made another voyage to New York, carrying one hundred passengers, but with no improvement in her speed. On her return to Liverpool she was chartered by the British Government to bring out troops to Canada. She arrived at Quebec, July 6th, 1861, with 2,528 soldiers and forty civilians, and during her stay there was visited by large crowds of people. Leaving Quebec, August 6th, she reached Liverpool on the 15th. A couple more voyages to New York, and her career as a passenger ship was ended. She had been singularly unfortunate. Her first commander, Captain Harrison, was drowned in the Solent by the upsetting of a small boat. On her trial trip, by the bursting of a steam jacket, six of her crew were killed and the ship was badly damaged. She had broken her rudder in mid-ocean, and lay for days a helpless mass in the trough of the sea during a gale of wind, rolling frightfully. Worse than all, she had got on the rocks entering New York harbour, with serious damage to her hull. The momentous question arose, What was to be done with her?
This leviathan of the deep was finally fitted up as a “cable ship,” and for a short time did good service in that line. In 1865 she had laid the second Atlantic cable to within a few hundred miles of Newfoundland, when it snapped and disappeared in 1,950 fathoms of water. Next year the Great Eastern not only was the means of laying a new cable successfully, but was the means of picking up the lost one—a remarkable feat of seamanship and electrical skill. After laying several other cables the big ship was tied up, never to go again. She was eventually sold for £16,000 and broken up, a somewhat tragic ending for such a triumph of engineering skill. But who can tell how much the successful “liner” of to-day owes to the failure of the Great Eastern? She came out ahead of time, and when the intricate art of managing successfully the details of an ocean steamship had yet to be learned.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, born at Portsmouth in 1806, was the son of Sir Mark I. Brunel, a French engineer, who attained celebrity as the architect of the Thames Tunnel, and other important works, in which he was assisted by his son, who also became famous as the Engineer-in-Chief of the Great Western Railroad, in the construction of which he adopted the broad gauge (7 feet), against the remonstrances of Stephenson and other railway authorities, and which was eventually changed to what has become the national gauge (4 feet, 8½ inches), at enormous expense. Mr. Brunel died in 1859. It was his misfortune to have landed on this planet about fifty years too soon.
The Screw-Propeller.
Most people fail to find much resemblance, if any at all, between that comparatively small-looking two or three-bladed thing that drives the steamship through the water at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and what is commonly known as a screw; but the discrepancy is easy of explanation. Archimedes, who is credited with the invention of the screw as a mechanical lever, little dreamed of the uses to which it was to be turned two thousand years later. He is said to have employed the screw in launching a large ship, pushing it into the water as is now done by hydraulic appliances. By changing his fulcrum and making the screw a part of the ship, the modern engineer has only reversed the mode of applying propelling power; the principle is the same. The effect produced by the screw in propelling a ship will be best understood by supposing an ordinary screw of large dimensions to be revolving rapidly in a trough full of water. It would then send the water away from it with great force; but as action and reaction are equal it would be itself, at the same time, urged in the opposite direction with exactly the same degree of force. If we suppose it, then, to be fixed in a ship, the ship will be pushed forward with the same force that is exerted by the screw in pushing back against the water. If the screw is made to revolve in the opposite direction, the converse of this takes place, and the ship is pushed backwards by the reaction of the screw.[11] The idea has long occupied the attention of inventive genius. As far back as 1746, at least, the capabilities of the screw as a motive power for ships have been tested by experiments. In 1770 James Watt, who had so much to do with perfecting the steam-engine, suggested the use of screw-propellers. In 1815 Trevethick took out a patent for one. Woodcroft did the same in 1826; but it was not until ten years later that its utility was successfully demonstrated.