But, with regard to the first and by far the most important consideration, the safety of a vessel at sea, I am disposed to think, though contrary to the generally accepted view, that ships of vast dimensions are less safe, in exceptional circumstances, than those of ordinary size. Take for instance the case of the accident to the Great Eastern, to which I have just referred, in which she lost her rudder, or when, at all events, it was so seriously injured as to be rendered inefficient. I need say nothing of the difficulty, or it might be of the impossibility, of providing a temporary mode of guiding a vessel of such huge dimensions. The loss of the rudder of any vessel in a gale of wind is no doubt a serious matter and one which must ever cause peril, but that peril increases with the size of the ship, for, when thus rendered helpless, the greater the bulk, the greater is the resistance offered to the action of the waves as they strike her sides. This is exemplified, though to a far greater degree, by the fact that a strong ship, on which the beating of the waves in the open sea would make little or no impression, would be dashed to pieces by the same waves if she was stranded on a lee shore. A large ship without rudder and, consequently, helpless in the hollow or trough of the sea would offer resistance to the stroke of the wave in proportion to her weight, and the wave would, consequently, strike with the greatest force on the body of the greatest weight. This, in some measure, and not without reason, accounts for the alarm created in the mind of the passenger on board of the Great Eastern during the gale he so graphically describes.
Chief later use of Great Eastern as a cable layer, but not, even here, remunerative.
From the time of this disaster, the movements of the Great Eastern are not of much historical interest, so far as regards merchant shipping. It is true, that she proved of great value and importance in laying the Atlantic telegraph cable during the summer of 1865, and, in the very skilful feat of picking up from the depths of the ocean the broken ends, and in laying another Atlantic cable during the summer of 1866, when no other ship of sufficient dimensions could then have been found to perform that difficult and hazardous undertaking.[438] She has also proved very useful since, in other similar operations, in India and elsewhere; but, for ordinary commercial operations as various persons predicted,[439] when she was first projected and long before she was sent to sea, she has been a ruinous, though not a lamentable failure.[440] Even the work of laying cables was not remunerative, for, by a report of the directors issued in March 1869, it appears that the great ship had been arrested for a debt of 35,000l., that the current expenses had, considerably, exceeded the receipts, and that there were other claims which had to be met, before she could again proceed to sea. These difficulties were, however, overcome. The debt of 35,000l. was settled for the comparatively moderate sum of “4000l.!” and the other demands, though not nearly so extortionate, were amicably adjusted. In 1868 the Great Eastern was again chartered by the Telegraphic Construction and Maintenance Company, for the purpose of laying a telegraph cable between Brest and Ducksburgh near Boston; and for the same company she laid a telegraph cable between Aden and Bombay in the spring of 1870.[441] In 1873 and 1874 she laid other two cables between Valentia and Heart’s Content in Newfoundland; and on the 25th of July, 1875, she completed her charter (20,000l. per annum), and was handed over to her owners. Since then she has been placed upon a gridiron to have her bottom cleaned, and I daresay her owners are now at a loss to know how she can be profitably employed.
Concluding remarks.
But it will hardly be gainsaid, that the building, launching, and navigating such a ship are events in the history of merchant shipping, sufficiently important to justify the extent of space devoted to her in these pages; and, should my imperfect record survive for the next hundred or fifty years, there may be found in these pages a collection of facts relating to a ship, more marvellous than that of Hiero, King of Syracuse, or of the Penteconter of Ptolemy Philopator. Perhaps, too, this record may contain more details of value, than the historians of those ships have handed down to posterity, for it may be that, a hundred or fifty years hence, the maritime commerce of the world may have grown to an extent sufficient to justify, with reasonable prospects of profit, another ship of the dimensions of the Great Eastern. I can only write of the past and the present, leaving the future to be dealt with by those who may follow me, and, perhaps, all that posterity will be able to say against the enterprising promoters of the Great Eastern may, hereafter, be condensed in the flattering eulogium, “their ideas in regard to dimensions were in advance of their age—they were only before their time.” Though far from realizing the expectations once entertained with regard to speed and small consumption of fuel, her failure is, mainly, to be attributed to the fact that, at the time she was constructed, there were no lines of traffic on which a vessel of such huge capacity could procure, with despatch, the amount of freight or passage money necessary to insure a profit. But, from first to last, even when the failures of her launch had become too apparent, the people of England were proud of her, and this is not surprising, for no other country could have raised, by voluntary subscription, and without any aid from Government, the capital requisite to construct and equip this monster ship for sea.
That their pride should have found vent in numerous paragraphs in the public press is only what might have been expected, for, though shrewd men shook their heads, and cautious men declined to invest their capital in the ship, she was a marvellous piece of workmanship, even the Americans admitting, that England might well feel an honest pride in having produced such a triumph of mechanical skill, and welcoming her as they did to their shores, as a characteristic evidence of the genius, energy, and pluck of their fatherland.
Although I have not hesitated to expose the want of forethought, which rendered the Great Eastern a commercial failure, and the grave mistake in her launch, I cannot refrain from admiring the extension of the spirit of national pride to private undertakings such as these. Much has been learned and much has still to be learned from her. Various mechanical contrivances, now in use, were first adopted in this great ship. In herself she indicates the most astounding progress. Indeed, when I consider that only forty years had elapsed since the small engines of the Comet which, though they puffed and strained, and made noise enough to frighten the people who watched the little vessel in her progress down the Clyde, were the finest of the period, and compare them with the vast engines of the Great Eastern, working in their combined action without the slightest jerk, and almost noiselessly, my mind is lost in wonder at the prodigious advance made, within my own time, in this mighty civilizing instrument.
FOOTNOTES:
[426] Mr. Brunel’s estimate to the directors of the cost of the launch was 14,000l.
[427] “What fleet (exclaims the writer of a leading article in one of the London daily papers) could stand in the way of such a mass, weighing some 30,000 tons, and driven through the water by 12,000 horse-power at the rate of 22 or 23 miles an hour?”