The whole scheme of this launch a thorough mistake.
The struggle of hydraulic power with the monster the company had created, and other appliances proved most expensive, the launch of this ship having cost no less than 120,000l. when 10,000l. or even 5000l., it was said, might have sufficed;[426] nor, indeed, is it easy to understand how, with all the data before them, the tons weight to be lifted, the angle of inclination, and the well-known rate of friction, dynamic science could not have calculated with the utmost accuracy the amount of force requisite to move the Great Eastern on her launching ways. No adequate consideration, however, seems to have been given to these important matters, for additions were made, day by day, to the force applied, and these, too, experimentally, and not, as might have been expected, as the result of careful, previous calculations. No doubt the chief cause of this expensive failure is attributable to the fact that Mr. Brunel (it was well known at the time that Mr. Scott Russell strongly opposed Mr. Brunel’s plan of launching) was permitted to try the almost insane experiment of launching the ship on iron instead of wooden ways, as has, hitherto, invariably been adopted in the launch of all other vessels.
The expenses attending the launch exhausted the funds of the Great Eastern Company; and brought it to the brink of dissolution. Nor was this the only trouble to which the Great Eastern was exposed. On the 5th of April, 1858, a sharp north-easterly squall, which swept the river with considerable violence, subjected her moorings to a strain so severe, that one of the chain cables on the port-bow parted about 20 feet below the hawse-hole, and for a time exposed the vessel to great danger; fortunately, however, this unfair weight snapped, also, the second stern-chain, and thus allowed the vessel’s bows to swing in towards the Deptford shore, thereby saving the Great Eastern from more serious loss.
Difficulties of the Company.
Offer to Government wisely declined.
The difficulties, however, in which the company were involved had now become a matter of public notoriety; the more so, that the vessel remained for more than a year equally unfinished as on the day she launched herself, and was in fact nothing more than a vast iron hulk lying on the waters of the Thames. Ineffectual efforts were made to induce the public to come forward and subscribe the extra capital requisite to complete her, but the launch, and other circumstances, had increased the doubts long entertained by men of business with regard to the prospects of the ship, as a commercial undertaking; hence, the public could not be induced to re-invigorate the exchequer of the company with sufficient money to equip her for sea. The various suggestions made to persuade the shareholders of the company to come forward with additional capital, were of no avail and they all, alike, failed in raising the requisite funds. A negotiation was even opened with the Government with a view to the purchase of the vessel, the press, all at once, teeming with articles to the effect that, whether important or not as a mercantile adventure, the great ship, as a vessel of war, would be “almost invaluable.”[427] This discovery, it is true, had been previously overlooked, but it soon became the theme of general discussion.
The difficulties of the existing means of oceanic communication it was said, compelled Government to maintain larger forces at all points of the empire, and at the same time, than were actually requisite; consequently, it was argued that, with two or three such stupendous vessels as the Great Eastern, such a necessity would be obviated, and Government would really have increased strength, even though her present military establishments were greatly reduced. It was, further, urged that continental nations were well aware that the secret of England’s weakness, as a military power, is not so much from the smallness as from the wide dispersion of her army. Once shown that means exist for obviating this necessity, and that she is able, in a few days, to transport an army of 10,000 men to any part of Europe, and England’s position, as a military empire, would be established. It was asserted that the political results, accruing from any Government having at its disposal such a class of ships, would be equally important; while the facility provided for the transportation of large numbers of soldiers across the seas would necessarily consolidate more closely the power of Great Britain with that of her distant possessions. The revolution a squadron of such vessels would effect in war would be as great as their results in commerce; moreover, for the first time, steam would achieve on the ocean what it had already achieved on land.
But the arguments employed by the negotiators, backed as these were by suggestions artfully thrown out by a portion of the public press, to the effect that foreign powers might become possessed of this invaluable ship to the prejudice, disadvantage, and dishonour of Great Britain, terminated in failure. Government decided against the proposal, and no alternative remained, but to wind up the affairs of the existing company and to endeavour to make some arrangement whereby fresh capital could be raised to complete the vessel.
Further proposal to employ her as a cable-layer.
The Atlantic cable, which was to form a telegraphic communication between Europe and the United States, was completed in the summer of 1858, and the vessels of war employed in laying it across the Atlantic having made an unsuccessful voyage on the first occasion, it was strongly urged upon Government[428] that the Great Eastern should be fitted up by the Admiralty for the purpose of laying it down, as the whole of the cable could be contained in this one vessel, thus diminishing the risks of failure necessarily inseparable from employing two ships, each starting in opposite directions from the middle of the Atlantic. But the prevailing opinion then was, though it changed a few years later, that the Great Eastern from her height out of the water was unadapted for such a service, and, further, that there were no public grounds on which the application of the necessary sum from the Exchequer to assist the operations of a private company could be justified: therefore, Government distinctly refused to entertain the proposal.