SS Great Britain in dry dock at Bristol in 2005, preserved for exhibition as a museum ship
History
United Kingdom
Name
Great Britain
Owner
Great Western Steamship Company
Port of registry
Bristol
Builder
William Patterson
Cost
Projected: £70,000
Actual: £117,000
Laid down
July 1839
Launched
19 July 1843
Completed
1845
Maiden voyage
26 July 1845
In service
1845–1886
Homeport
Bristol, England
51°26′57″N2°36′30″W / 51.4492°N 2.6084°W / 51.4492; -2.6084
Status
Museum ship
General characteristics
Type
Passenger steamship
Displacement
3,674 tons load draught
Tons burthen
3,443 bm
Length
322 ft (98 m)
Beam
50 ft 6 in (15.39 m)
Draught
16 ft (4.88 m)[1]
Depth of hold
32.5 ft (9.9 m)
Installed power
2 × twin 88-inch (220 cm) cylinder, bore, 6 ft (1.83 m) stroke, 500 hp (370 kW), 18 rpm inclined direct-acting steam engines
Propulsion
Single screw propeller
Sail plan
Original: Five schooner-rigged and one square-rigged mast
After 1853: Three square-rigged masts
Speed
10 to 11 knots (19 to 20 km/h; 12 to 13 mph)
Capacity
360 passengers, later increased to 730
1,200 long tons (1,300 short tons; 1,200 t) of cargo
Complement
130 officers and crew (as completed)
SS Great Britain is a museum ship and former passenger steamship that was advanced for her time. She was the largest passenger ship in the world from 1845 to 1853. She was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), for the Great Western Steamship Company's transatlantic service between Bristol and New York City. While other ships had been built of iron or equipped with a screw propeller, Great Britain was the first to combine these features in a large ocean-going ship. She was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic Ocean, which she did in 1845, in 14 days.
The ship is 322 ft (98 m) in length and has a 3,400-ton displacement. She was powered by two inclined two-cylinder engines of the direct-acting type, with twin cylinders 88 in (220 cm) bore, of 6-foot (1.8 m) stroke. She was also provided with secondary masts for sail power. The four decks provided accommodation for a crew of 120, plus 360 passengers who were provided with cabins, and dining and promenade saloons.
When launched in 1843, Great Britain was by far the largest vessel afloat.[2] But her protracted construction time of six years (1839–1845) and high cost had left her owners in a difficult financial position, and they were forced out of business in 1846, having spent all their remaining funds refloating the ship after she ran aground at Dundrum Bay in County Down near Newcastle in what is now Northern Ireland, after a navigation error. In 1852 she was sold for salvage and repaired. Great Britain later carried thousands of emigrants to Australia from 1852 until being converted to all-sail in 1881. Three years later, she was retired to the Falkland Islands, where she was used as a warehouse, quarantine ship and coal hulk until she was scuttled in 1937, 98 years after being laid down.[3]
In 1970, after Great Britain had been abandoned for 33 years, Sir Jack Arnold Hayward, OBE (1923–2015) paid for the vessel to be raised and repaired enough to be towed north through the Atlantic back to the United Kingdom, and returned to the Bristol dry dock where she had been built 127 years earlier. Hayward was a prominent businessman, developer, philanthropist and owner of the English football club Wolverhampton Wanderers. Now listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Great Britain is a visitor attraction and museum ship in Bristol Harbour, with between 150,000 and 200,000 visitors annually.
^Claxton 1845, p. 3.
^Grahame Farr, The Steamship Great Britain (Bristol Historical Association pamphlets, no. 11, 1965), p. 1.
SSGreatBritain is a museum ship and former passenger steamship that was advanced for her time. She was the largest passenger ship in the world from 1845...
SSGreat Eastern was an iron sail-powered, paddle wheel and screw-propelled steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and built by John Scott Russell...
the Great Western Steamship Company. Completed in 1838, she was the largest passenger ship in the world from 1837 to 1839, the year the SSBritish Queen...
SS Archimedes was a steamship built in Britain in 1839. She was the world's first steamship to be driven successfully by a screw propeller. Archimedes...
above the waterline, with the cylinders positioned below the shaft. SSGreatBritain used chain drive to transmit power from a paddler's engine to the propeller...
The Archdiocese of Thyateira and GreatBritain is an archdiocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The...
Brunel (father and son) and the SSGreatBritain The Brunel Institute – Collaborative venture between the SSGreatBritain Trust and the University of Bristol...
own. Although the Great Exhibition was a platform on which countries from around the world could display their achievements, Britain sought to prove its...
racing yacht launched by Princess Anne on 21 May 1973 named after the SSGreatBritain, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel which was the world's first "iron...
Pyronaut and Mayflower adjoining Prince Street Bridge Dry docks: SSGreatBritain, the Matthew St Augustine's Reach, Pero's Bridge Bathurst Basin Queen...
p. 87. Corlett, Ewan (1975). The Iron Ship: the Story of Brunel's ssGreatBritain. Conway. Hereward Philip Spratt (1951). Transatlantic Paddle Steamers...
under a navigable river (the River Thames) and the development of the SSGreatBritain, the first propeller-driven, ocean-going iron ship, which, when launched...
Brunel was a British engineer who constructed a number of innovative civil and railway engineering projects and, in 1845, the SSGreatBritain, at that time...
Brunel and the Great Atlantic Steamships. ISBN 9780060195953. Corlett, Ewan (1975). The Iron Ship: the Story of Brunel's ssGreatBritain. Conway. Bernard...
ship to be both iron-hulled and equipped with a screw propeller was SSGreatBritain, a creation of Brunel. Her career was disastrous and short. She was...
merchant navy and serve as captain of the steamships SSGreat Western and the SSGreatBritain. He returned to the Royal Navy to see service during the...
reinvented and first used in modern ships by Isambard Kingdom Brunel on the SSGreatBritain, launched in 1843. Control of aircraft is complicated by their motion...
Gibb was a pupil of Brunel and Wolfe Barry in 1895. He also designed the SS Chauncy Maples, which was built in Glasgow in 1899 and transported overland...
and an innovator in ship construction, producing both the SSGreat Western and SSGreatBritain, fine lined yachts and a small number of warships. Patterson...
data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 7 May 2024. Beaumont...
data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 7 May 2024. Bowden...
Chronicle: "The Great Iron Ship", about the salvage and return from the Falkland Islands of the Isambard Kingdom Brunel ship SSGreatBritain. His penultimate...
passengers and crew. Based on ideas pioneered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SSGreatBritain of 1845, City of Glasgow established that Atlantic steamships could...