In 1819 the first Atlantic crossing by a steam powered vessel was completed. The ship, the 320 ton , 110 foot long Savannah was not entirely steam powered of course, with shipboard steam engines being a new technology in its infancy, the ship was was still fitted with masts and fully rigged with sails, and more often than not the ship used sail and wind rather than rely on the steam engines to propel the ship. These early steamers were not even considered passenger ships as being a passenger on a ship for a voyage as long as the Atlantic crossing was neither pleasant or common of the era. The ships were designed more to haul cargo than passengers, all said not much space was allotted for such. It was not until the great wave of emigration from Europe to America that prompted better accomodations for fare paying passengers as the Atlantic trade at this time brought more revenue for a ship owner to carry passengers than cargo.

All of this fascinated a young English engineer by the name of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Brunel drew plans for the concept of a ship with an all iron hull divided into watertight compartments with bulkheads to restrict and even prevent flooding. In 1838 Brunel's revolutionary designs were incorporated into the Great Britain. With a length of 289 feet and weighing 3,720 tons, and massive two story four cylinder reciprocating steam engines supplying the twin screws with over 1,000 horsepower, the Great Britain was the largest ship in the world at that time.

Being the largest ship in the world was one accomplishment, but the Great Britain and other passenger ships of the day were not spacious and luxurious. Many shipbuilders were striving to create the atmosphere of a five star hotel on the sea, but a ship on a large enough scale to allow this had not yet been built. Brunel wasnt satisfied either and began the creation of what would become the most misplaced ocean liner in history.

Brunel wanted to create a ship large enough to capture the "floating hotel" theme but at the same time to create a steamship to open a route from Great Britain to Austraila around the Cape of Good Hope, this route was then dominated by the tall masted, sleek hulled Clippers like the Cutty Sark. Brunel wanted to build for the Eastern Steam Navigation Company, a iron hulled steamship able to carry the most amount of passengers and cargo between these destinations while remaining elegant and graceful.

The designs Brunel drew up were for a ship around 700 feet long and around 20,000 tons that he estimated would cost £500,000, the shipyards of John Scott Russel submitted a low tender of £377,000 to complete the project. Brunel accepted the bid and plans were underway for the construction of the massive ship to begin on the banks of the Thames. The only problem was that the ship was of such a large scale that no modern shipyards could accomodate her, and she would not be able to be launched stern first as she would run aground on the opposite shore of the river. The soultion was reached to build her parallel to the river bank and launch her sideways - a simple enough plan, however such a feat had never been attempted, and there were naysayers who doomed the ship a failure from the start. Work on the massive ship began at Russel's Millwall shipyard in early 1854 with two thousand workers involved. Known as the Leviathan by the workers, word of the construction of the ship spread like wildfire and the contruction sight became a tourist attraction drawing crowds of thousands from all over the world. The Eastern Steam Navigation Company as well as Russell himself exploited the building of the huge ship as a lucrative tourist attraction contrary to Brunel's recommendation, he had wanted to keep the ship out of the limelight as much as possible until it was completed. Brunel supervised the entire project and applied his dilligent approach to the engineering programme. It became apparent as construction progressed, that Scott Russell's financial management skills were poor - if not corrupt. Tension with Russell, who was playing the media to Brunel's detriment, and poor handeling of the problems of escalating costs and the death and mutilation of workers due to carelessness sapped Brunel's strength and his health suffered.

After four long years of construction the "Leviathan" as it was known was completed and ready for launch, re-named Great Eastern by Brunel, the ship was set for launch on November 11, 1857. The completion of the Great Eastern drew a firestorm of publicity and 10,000 spectators bought tickets to attend the launch, against Brunel's advice, as an untested horizontal launching method was being employed and the risks and possible accidents could not be calculated as they could be with a tradition stern first launch. At noon on November 11^th the Great Eastern was launched - or so the crown thought. The iron slipway the ship rested on for the four years of her construction had rusted and seized and like a chest of drawers the 689 foot long hull became hopelessly jammed after the underpowered hydraulic launching rams moved it just three feet. During the fiasco, a capstan on the deck failed dropping a massive ancor chain down into the crown that had gathered around the hull, killing a dozen workers and injuring sevral dozen more. The whole incident was due to Russell's incompetance but it was Brunel that the media villified for the deaths of the workers, his reputation and health suffered greatly.

Eastern Steam Navigation Company was financially embarrassed to incur the additional expense needed to attempt to launch the Great Easten a second time, and ship the sat unattened for three months jammed on its slipway until Brunel personally brought in additional, more powerful hydraulic rams at his own expense and after three more attempts the Great Eastern was finally launched on January 30, 1858 with her construction cost totalling £750,000, twice the figure Brunel agreed to pay Russell in 1854! The skyrocketing construction costs coupled with the delayed launch among other complications depleted the funds Eastern Steam allotted Brunel and Russell and nearly bankrupted the whole lot of them. As a result all work ceased and the great ship lay at dock unfinished and unattended until summer of 1859.

Six times the size of any ship built to date, the Great Eastern measured 689 feet in length, 118 feet in beam and weighing 22,000 tons, the Great Eastern was the largest ship in the world and the largest moving man made object ever built to date. The Great Eastern featured vast public areas furnished with the finest materials available and made to rival any five star hotel of its day. The ship was propelled by three huge steam engines powering two massive paddlewheels and a four bladed screw, coupled with six masts and over 6,000 yards of sail. The ship's massive size can be attributed to Brunel's idea to compete with the clipper ships - to do this he needed a ship that was large enough to haul sufficient coal cargo and passengers to sail non-stop port to port, the end result - the Great Eastern.

During the year the ship sat undisturbed, Brunel had given up the thought of the Austrialian run in favor of the transatlantic run. The ship was purchased by the Great Ship Company, who in turn supplied the funds to needed complete the work on her. In August of 1859 the ship was competed and her sea trials began in September. Brunel's poor health caused him to miss the trials, which for him may have been a blessing because on September 9^th while out at sea a clogged engine ventilator caused a massive explosion in the portside paddlewheel engine that severely damaged the paddlewheel and surrounding box, tore up the upper deck and launched the first funnel into the air like a rocket. Scalded workers scrabled to get off the ship by jumping over the side, one was mangled to death after he was caught in the turning paddlewheel. Brunel, who was a heavy cigar smoker, sufferend a stroke over the anxiety of missing the ship's sea trials - suffered another when he heard the news of the explosion and died the following week on September 15^th. The ship had claimed the life of its creator, and this was just the first in a series of catastrophies that would make the Great Eastern legendary.

The Great Eastern's maiden voyage to New York was set for June 17, 1860. She sailed almost totally empty and upon arriving in New York was greeted with a fourteen cannon salute - the first merchant ship to receive such an honor. To make up for lost money, the ship was opened up to the public and over 150,000 people visited the ship in July alone. Two day cruises were also organized for ten dollars per person. The first attracted over 2,000 people, and since the captain did not expect such a crowd, only 200 cabins were made up, food was inadequate and the rest of the ship was left unattended and dirty. As a result of the negative publicity this drew, the second cruise turned out only 100 people. These figures seem tiny considering the ship was built to house 4,000 passengers comfortably - a figure not exceeded until the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary in 1936!

The Great Eastern continued to be plagued with bad luck, and she never carried anything close to her full compliment of passengers. The third transatlantic run the ship made was completed in eight and one quarter days - a record for the time, but not fast enough to win the Blue Ribband. On her fourth voyage in 1861 she encountered a severe three day storm that tossed the ship violently back and forth at 45 degree angles that would have sunk any smaller vessel but she survived due to her massive size, though the storm destroyed the rudder and the ship managed to limp back to Cork, Ireland for repairs that took over three months and cost over £60,000.

In August 1862, the Great Eastern sailed with her record number of paying passengers - 1500. The most noteable passengers on board this sailing included Jules Verne and Mark Twain. Bad luck, however, wasn't far away. The ship sailed into uncharted territories off the coast of Long Island and struck an underwater rock bed that tore and 83 foot gash in the bottom of the ship - Brunel's ingenious bulkheads and watertight compartments saved her from sinking yet again. The repair cost was never revealed but must have been astronomically high, and this along with continued loss of earnings caused the owners to lay the ship up as thier company was now bankrupt.

In 1865 the Atlantic Cable was laid, but had broken only after three weeks service, a new more trustworthy solide cable was needed, but there was no ship in the world large enough to carry such a length of cable at that time - no ship but the Great Eastern. She was chartered by the Atlantic Telegraph Company and large areas of her luxurious interior was stripped out to accomodate the massive cable spools. The Great Eastern started her mission from Ireland, but halfway across the Atlantic, the cable snapped and was lost in 6,000 feet of water. But shame on those who give up, in 1866 Atlantic Telegraph took the Great Eastern out to try again, passing the mission with flying colors. On her way back to Europe, the Great Eastern dredged the bottom of the ocean with a graple and managed to retreive the broken cable. Once she returned to Britain she was restored to a transatlantic liner, but this ended in failure and in 1869 the French govenment chartered the ship to lay another transatlantic cable.

It is sad to see such a magnificent vessel succeed only at laying cable but fail miserably at the very task she was built to perform, carry passengers. In 1874 a cable laying ship, the Faraday was built and the Great Eastern was outdated. The ship sat rusting in Milford Haven from 1874 to 1885, only to be bought by Edward de Mattos for £26,000. He used the Great Eastern as a floating billboard, and not unlike the Queen Mary, the Great Eastern was turned into a floating amusement sight. In 1888 she was sold to a scrapyard for £16,000 and sadly the last voyage the Great Eastern made was from the Scottish Clyde to Liverpool to a scrapyard where workers spent three years disassembling the massive ship.

Always rumored to be a cursed ship, a human skeleton dressed in a shipyard worker's clothes was found trapped inside the double bottom - one of the many unfortunate souls the ship claimed during her construction in the 1850's. Was it he that cursed the Great Eastern and brought such misery to all who owned and sailed on her? We may never know.

The Great Eastern held the record for being the largest ship in the world until the Oceania exceeded her length in 1899 and the Lusitania exceeded her displacement.