SS Great Eastern - Guide 237
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
- The SS Great Eastern, an iron monster of the 19th century, is today's subject.
Read more about the ship here:
www.amazon.co.uk/great-iron-ship-James-Dugan/dp/B0000CIOV8/
www.amazon.co.uk/S-S-Great-Eastern-Greatest-Iron/dp/0715380540
Naval photos and more - www.drachinifel.co.uk
Model ships of many periods - store.warlordga...?aff=21
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Next on the list:
Z Class
Cleveland class
SM U-156
Boston class
Des Moines Heavy cruisers.
Hydra Class Ironclads
Audacious class CV's
Malta class
Tennessee-class cruiser
The Merrimack and Mersey class of frigates
Henri IV
USS Marblehead
Pinguin
German Auxiliary Cruiser Atlantis
Project 24 Sovetsky Soyuz class Battleship
HMS Caroline
Ships of Battle of Campeche
PT Boats
Pinned post for Q&A :)
Cable ships have been a very important aspect of global communications since the days of the telegraph. Can you do a video at some point tracing the history of these ships and their major innovations?
Hms Wellesley aka hms cronwall, the last ship of the line sunk by enemy action, and the only one sunk by air raid.
What are some of the most notable lauch failures or disasters and how did they happen?
Did you have to take a little while to decide whether or not to do a guide on a ship that was clearly not a warship?
But I am glad you did a video on the Great Eastern as the first picture of this vessel that I had ever seen was in a world book encyclopedia back in 92
What is your favourite warship?
The capatin during the cable laying was Cpt Robert Halpin of Wicklow, Ireland. Whilst most comments make note of the fact that cable splicing was not necessary, it was necessary on one occasion when the cable broke. The cable could not be retrieved at the time of the break, so the ship returned to port scheduled to have a go the following year. Halpin and crew navigated the ship to the same spot, trawled for the original cable, raised & spliced it, and laid the remaining cable to reach the Americian shore later that year. Bear in mind this was1886 with navigation mainly due to sextant & star fixes. A phenomenal feat of seamanship today, never mind 155 years ago.
Her achievements in the laying of trans-Atlantic cables cannot be overstated. They were a world- changing feat of technology
Shame the first cable failed and everyone was embarrassed by the fiasco.
Other ships: yo where you at ?? Gotta connect the cables mate.
SS Great Eastern: pathetic
@@Edax_Royeaux
Was that the fault of the ship?
@@peterblood50 Given the ship seemed to ruin the financial lives of whoever it worked for, possibly. Failure has an unfortunate habit of being infectious.
@@peterblood50 No. Electrical problems, mainly using high voltage (very much against the opinion of not-yet-Lord Kelvin) which fried the cable.
Sir the boiler room exploded
Ship: Who cares, move along
Sir we have huge hole in the hull
Ship: And ? I need to finish the trip into new york
Nothing stops the mail...
only thing she was missing was the odd pirate attack after the storm incident.
I believe there is a RUclips video covering the removal of the rock that put a hole in the ship.
@@andywomack3414 Oh THAT is the rock she (and so many other ships) ran into. It is an interesting story. I don't recall her being mentioned in that video.
I love the British approach of jury-rigging and duck taping its way to the place of the global hegemon.
Well, seeing how this ship never participated in a war, let alone laughed off a torpedo strike that wasn't noticed until post-war, survived being rammed by an armored cruiser, or even ran down a uboat, you have no excuse not to cover RMS/HMT Olympic.
Second that!
Hear, hear!
@Otosj van Tolerbok The torpedo was a dud, it just made a small dent because of impact force. And as far as anybody can tell, it was fired from a different u-boat several months after the one she rammed. (The boat that got run over had the shot lined up, but had a problem with the torpedo tube and so couldn't shoot.)
Edit: if the torpedo had worked, well, look at what happened to Olympic's sister ships Britannic (sank after probably hitting a mine, might have been a torpedo) and Titanic (you know that story). Despite the advertising, they were rather sensitive to large holes in the hull.
@@DeliveryMcGee ...so, anyway, since it survived a torpedo impact...
Totally agree
Great Eastern: why do I exist?
Everyone in her homeland: *RULE BRITTANIA, BRITTANIA RULES THE WAVES*
Understandable, have a nice day *proceeds to sip tea*
There's a good chap.
The good old pre Brexit days.
Check your spelling!
@@edwardandrews2752 to whom are you referring to?
You mean to tell me that Brunel designed a giant and somewhat impractical iron and steel monstrosity.
I would never expect such a thing from Brunel. Ever.
I'd be reluctant to call her a monstrosity, but she was decades ahead of her time and probably a bit too ambitious for the technology of the day.
😉
@@Deevo037 Well, more like the economy of the day...
@Indigo Rodent In that aspect, it reminds me of the Airbus A380. Not ahead of it's time, but just too damn big for anybody to have a practical (or profitable) purpose to keep them around.
@@Deevo037 But that is THE point, about BRUNEL. He wasn't called the Little Giant for nothing. His vision was greater than any other's, he entered into engineering worlds , thought to be impossible, sometimes his backer's let him down, or sheer ill luck. In fact, he worked himself to death, literally. There will never be another.
A fascinating ship built by a fascinating man, quite literally decades ahead of his time. Like many British engineers he skirted the line between eccentricity and genius.
Eccentricity, genius and lunacy 😉
His father had developed the RN's black making factory at Portsmouth during the Napoleonic Wars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Block_Mills
"Sir, what would be the ship's propulsion system?"
"ALL OF IT."
so it has oars?
- But Sir, that would be too expensive!
- Fine! Scrap the oars!
I would of loved to see this thing take a high speed turn
“Yes”
Nice Exeter pfp
Sailor: OH NO SIR, WE HIT A ROCK, WE'RE SINKING, SHALL WE EVACUATE
Captain: tis but a scratch
Captain: ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba baba ba ba
@@Lgs260495 actually no one knew what they'd hit until they got to shore. it was underwater where they couldn't see it and the ship didn't shudder too much. they immediately called divers to inspect the hull when they noticed a slight list as they entered port.
SS Great Eastern was the Concorde of the Victorian Era. An amazing feat of engineering and technology but an utter commercial failure.
Russell: What would You like for the ship propulsion?
Brunel: YES.
All of them please, and also make the engines the most powerful there is
Just like my wife...
Belt and Braces.
Brunel himself is an interesting subject and a number of biographies have been written about him.
Brunel was an authentic genius.
My feet started tapping happily when I saw one of Brunel's projects was being covered.
"THE LARGEST [THING] IN THE WORLD!"
@@abrahamdozer6273 He really was.
Could you imagine what he would be doing in today's world?
The launch of the Great Eastern in the mid 19th century would be the equivalent of some excentric madlad launching a ship the size of half of the Nimitz Class, all bunched together. Insane for the era unquestionably
They call it the Falcon Heavy
I am launching a nuclear/fusion reactor/solar powered hovercraft the size of South Sudan, it's going to be nigh on indestructible but people are going to have trouble thinking up a use for it other than annoying the ships which have to change course to accommodate it. Also it will cost enough to ruin whoever is stupid enough to give me money.
Not a warship.. but one of the more interesting ships of all history!
Considering how important telegraph would be in the future wars, i'm happy to see her covered.
Drachs: A few guns strapped on her in its career? *All the excuse I need* #_#
OF ALL Great ships of the past, that I wish had survived today, ''THE GREAT EASTERN'' is it. Having been aboard Brunels ''Great Britain'' many times, she is but a taster, of what came after. Buy the book about this colossal Leviathan, the day to day work on her, was truly stupendous, huge scale problems, overcome, with unique ideas and equipment.
technically she was for a period of time…
Her role as an armed troop ship probably have Drach the wiggle room to include her. She's one of those mad white elephant projects of the 19th: grandiose, impractical and utterly fascinating.
it is interesting how important this ship is she literally changed the world with all the cables she laid. she single handedly brought the world together long before internet or phones were invented. it could even be argued that she is the most important ship even built. because she is the first shit to be able to travel such long distances with out refuelling or needed something as fickle as the wind to help her.
*when your best asset is also the reason you have no money*
That's true of any ship. Just some more than others.
This is honestly a feat of engineering we can barely comprehend and it just looks like some kind of meme ship so I can't take it seriously 😂🤣
poor you
@@MrDaiseymay I am just joking it's an impressive ship and I enjoy drachinfel discussing it I just was pointing out that if you showed this to someone without any context they might mistake it for a madeup meme ship of some type
The only Engineering feat I know that is comparable is the 1969 Apollo Moon landing.
One advantage "Great Eastern" had when laying cable were it's paddle-wheels, which made the ship able to do 180 degree turns while not moving through the water. I guess laying cable was not a simple operation.
@@somercet1 Yea, and especially the first as the issues were novel and they had to figure things out as they went along. Such as being able to retrieve a cable that had parted and sunk to the bottom of an ocean two miles deep.
It's been a while since I read about it so it would pay to fact check what I say.
Could the Great Eastern actually do that? Many paddle-wheelers simply have a fixed axis between the side wheels.
@@tz8785 I don't know for sure. I am relying on memory, or I could be entirely mistaken.
Regards to Great Eastern, it's size would seem to make having an engine for each wheel possible.
That's a great question as sometimes I see the possible, not the actual. Most likely I read that in a story or some other lit about her. Worth checking out...(Jeopardy! tune backwards)
"The power came from four steam engines for the paddles and an additional engine for the propeller." Wikipedia
Not definitive, but suggestive.
What advantage would there be for a single massive drive axle with zero maneuvering capability? That would be one 82' long, heavy, crooked, whirling piece of machinery occupying a big chunk of hull space. But hey, just the thing a Victorian engineer would love.
Further research required.
@@tz8785 been 20 years since I read it, but IIRC... yes. Brunel realized the inherent danger of having a ship that size, and part of why he had the paddle wheels was to make steering easier. In fairness, wheels that size were too large for any single engine of the era to turn BOTH at once anyways, so splitting it into right and left drive made it easier to build engines to turn the monsters. One of the ships many " biggest" appellations... was biggest paddlewheel steam ship. No one has made a paddlewheel steamer that size ever again. But for navigation, the wheels were a great help. They let the ship do things in ports that others couldn't, and that modern ships need a tug boat to push them around. No tugs existed back then that were large enough anyways. :D Well, I guess if you used more than one?
I love how half of Brunnels life was just "thats a nice thing, I bet I can do bigger"
That was the hallmark of his train solution too. Why use the width of a horse drawn carriage for the tracks when you can make a much bigger train with a wider track span.
@@John.0z To be fair 4' 8.5" is just annoying...
It would also probably be a benefit nowadays if they had used a wider gauge from the beginning.
@@sergarlantyrell7847 There were a few that were 5' 3". They are still in use in some states of Australia, at least. But when the time came to have a single gauge from Melbourne to Sydney, the "standard" one got the nod. I have always taken that as proof that I know too little about the subject.
I do know it is a trade-off, and the diameter of the curves demanded by the terrain is the decider. Maybe if the lines were being laid now the modern tunnelling and earthmoving equipment would allow a different trade-off?
I look at the overhang and height used on the 4' 8" lines and wonder about how they do it!
Tbf, this monster was exactly what was needed to lay transatlantic telegraph/telephone cable in that era since it actually could carry enough cable to go from one shore to the other
One could argue that only a ship the size of the Great Eastern made the trans-oceanic cables possible in the 19th century. The first cable went into operation 1866. It remained in service until 1966. It could be used for telephone after the 1940s. The absence of the need for mid-ocean splicing added enormously to the reliability oft the cable.
It wasn't just that it was able to carry all the cable, it also had the dwell time needed to stay at sea for the extremely long time it took to lay the cable, which had to be done at low speeds. Using two ships would have cut the time at sea in half, but added the weakness of the splice. Having the option to lay a single, unbroken cable was a boon.
@@kevinsullivan3448 I think I remember from a book on the subject that the paddle wheels also aided it too since they could lay cable off the stern without using the propeller
@@AsbestosMuffins Yeah, this is true. when laying cable they shut off the props.
Oh what could have been had Brunel lived long enough to get the ear of Admiral Jackie Fisher…
Those two would be a interesting combination.
Admiral Scheer's gunnery officer: "vot do ve have to do to sink zat 5- funnelled monster? Ve are almost out of ammunition, and it just looks a bit dented"
Admiral Scheer: "Just vatch out for ze funnels- zey are lethal!"
Great Eastern with no sails, at least 6x2 12" turrets, 18 knots top speed.
Love it!
Probably just as well - HMS Incomparable would have been on the stocks:)
I'm surprised he didn't install oars as well, tbh...
they would go ahead in row boats tied to it to pull it 😊
"I knew we had forgotten something"
She had them, she just never needed them.
so this ship was the forerunner of a class of ships still active in the world...cable ships. While they lay fiber optic cable now, it is still an important global business. It is often the case that a visionary builds something to meet a purpose and other visionaries see alternate uses and those become the real innovation.
- Titanic: I'm designed to be unsinkable!
- Great Eastern: HAH! Try me; greenhorn!
The Titanic wasn't designed to be unsinkable. It wan't even claimed to be unsinkable. That was a myth created by the people who read about it.
@@redicity5884 I know
@@TomPrickVixen then why did you say that the Titanic was designed to be unsinkable lol
@@redicity5884 because it's builders tried to, they hoped the size of the ship would make it hard to sink, thus probably why the media at the time claimed it unsinkable, but to their credit, it did stay on the surface for 2 hours and a half (tho not compared to USS Yorktown (CV-5) getting bombed and torpedoed but staying on the surface for another fricking day before getting sunk by a submarine despite being abandoned)
@@redicity5884 I think it came from a ship building magazine of the day labeling her as "practically unsinkable" and the rest of the press ran with unsinkable.
It's truly sad that the Great Eastern was plagued with so many setbacks throughout her life from the very beginning. Brunel put his heart and soul into that ship and it was WAY ahead of it's time at it's launch. It was a revolutionary ship rather than an evolutionary ship. I mean a ship displacing 32,160 tons, weighing in at 18,915 GRT back in 1858 with a length of 692'? That's crazy. The next ship to surpass her length was the RMS Oceanic in 1899 and she was less than half the displacement of Great Eastern. This ship was definitely way ahead of it's time and set the standard for what an ocean liner should be.
A big part of that huge displacement was using double hull iron plates over such a large frame.
@@gregorywright4918 well, if not for the double hull, she might have sunk in the "Great Eastern Rock" incident. As-is she was merely damaged and still seaworthy..
@@gregorywright4918
Well as you can see, she was a tank of a ship and no rocks, storms or even violent explosions could sink this son of a gun, real shame they did not retrofit her and continued service until 1920s.
The same can be said for her predecessor- Great Britain. It is amazing that we still have Her around.
Great Eastern would have made an amazing museum ship.
It is impossible to imagine her size. Especially for a ship of that time period.
@@thetorturepenguin SS Great Britain was literally the Ur-example our conception of ocean liner: i.e. iron-hulled oceangoing screwship. In all, a far more influential ship---and one of her time. But Great Eastern saw the way forward before its significance could be understood or appreciated---far ahead of its time. Though I suspect that had it still been around, it might not be quite as legendary.
The GE was the engineering wonder for her time. But a bit like a big Mercedes S Class saloon/sedan she was over engineered to the point where there were endless mechanical issues. The first ship to actually exceed her size in both length and gross registered tonnage would be the RMS Celtic of 1901. Celtic, unlike the GE, was well thought out and designed. Her accommodations being comfortable but not ostentatious and her engines being specifically designed NOT to compete for transatlantic speed records, she proved to be both popular with the traveling public and so economical in fuel consumption that she and her three succeeding sister ships were a huge commercial success for her owners. That being the White Star Line. Alas White Star's next class of ocean liners would not be quite so successful.
1901 Almost 50 years later. She stood at the Largest ship title for as long. Like Saturn V still holding the latest Rocket tital
@@stekra3159 At least one of the "biggest" appellations for Great Eastern still stands, and probably always will. "Largest Paddlewheel Steamer ever built."
Just imagine having a ship so durable, that it survived boiler room explosions, storms which sunk any other ship, destruction of large amounts of the primary hull and the bankruptcy 2 times.
A amazing piece of engineering for sure.
The Russians would have killed to get one of those 20 jears later when they sailed to Asia.
I think you mean like 45 years later, as GE was launched in 1859, and the 2nd Pacific Squadron departed in 1904.
Of course, with the Russians luck, she would have been captained by the man who instead captained the Камчатка (Kamchatka), and it would have been all for naught.
@@thekinginyellow1744 I meant the 20 jears after her scrapping. But this works too.
SS Great Eastern: When you are both too cursed and strong enough to shrug it off at the same time.
SS Great Eastern: When you have Protagonist luck.
Basically all kids books on ship and naval history I read as a kid included a mention of this colossus.
Yep for me too. But never any real details. This was great.
To quote Jeremy Clarkson “she must have been like seeing the Starship Enterprise coming to New York harbour for the first time. It’s worth noting that several workmen fell between the double hull and could not be rescued. Their bones were only found when the ship was scrapped.
That was almost certainly an urban legend, Jago Hazzard (another youtuber worth subscribing to) did a special on this subject which pretty conclusively debunked it: ruclips.net/video/95FngmK-rSw/видео.html
I get the feeling that a boy on a rope would be able to attach a looped rope to any man that fell in such a way. Just with a simple reaity check the idea does not hold any merit. It is like you believe every generation that came before were as thick as shit or something.
I did read ages ago that a man and a boy were entombed by plating and because of the din of construction could not hammer out a message. Their bodies were discovered decades later during dismantling.
Urban legend or not, some times truth is covered up due to squeamishness.
@@fredericksaxton3991 Yeah, but have other have pointed out considering how often Great Eastern needed repaired you’d think they would have found the bodies sooner.
@@fredericksaxton3991 Oh yes back in those days people were blind and could not see the plating as it was being swing in on a crane, they had not sorted out how to divide up work and give people the job that needed doing either while keeping workers alive and the idea of supervisors and foreman was not invented yet.
Even the crane driver and riggers just plopped a plate over people and welded them in, no biggie, not like experienced welders were in short supply or anything so who cares?
I have fond memories of playing a Space: 1889 RPG game where we helped some Fenians hijack the Great Eastern before she was broken up for scrap, whereupon she was refitted and rearmed with some silly VSF gadgetry and went off commerce raiding against those pernicious Englishers. Fun times. Pretty sure we met Captain Nemo during that adventure too.
Captain Nemo was there to buy her plates from the scrapper for a "submersible vessel" he was dreaming about building...
I think this is the first -- and maybe the ONLY -- account of Great Eastern I've ever seen which didn't dwell on the spooky urban legends about dead riveters and a jinx on the ship. Well done!
It's a shame that story gets so often repeated given there's no contemporary evidence for any bodies being found. I find it impossible to believe the tawdry Victorian press with its love of the macabre would have passed up a chance to publish a find like that. The story only seemed to come into existence many decades after the ship had been scrapped.
Well done to Drach for being the consummate historian and ignoring the fairytales.
@@CountScarlioniit’s not true?
@@journeymancellist9247I think it would be more strictly correct to say there's no evidence to support the story. I can't definitively say it's not true as I've no means to disprove it either.
@@CountScarlioni thanks. I’ve only read the one book”the great iron ship” so I’ve no proof either way either. It sure seems like there’s be some contemporary reports of such a macabre event, so I just assumed the story was accurate.
It was interesting that they recently retrieved some of the plates that had sunk into the mud.
from what source did that come from ?
Magnet fishing?
@@kevinsullivan3448 Magnetic fishing? There are magnetic fish out there?
web.archive.org/web/20100701013417/www.easthamptonstar.com/DNN/Default.aspx?tabid=3830
there’s also a Time Team episode devoted to the ship that discovered those metal plates
@@MrDaiseymay there's a documentary about the Mersey where they do that.
In a ship so large the paddle wheels could help steer the ship by running at different speeds. Like bow thrusters today.
Any twin screw ship has a basic ability to steer using the engines
The paddles were fixed to a common shaft so couldn't be turned independently. However, by running the paddle engines astern and the screw ahead, using the wash from the screw over the rudder, she could spin on her own axis. I can't now recall where I read this, it included a contemporary account of such a manoeuver.
@@stoutmacintosh5390 I doubt this is correct. Large paddlewheelers often had two engines driving slightly offset paddlewheels for exactly this kind of manouverability. Examples include the massive ferries Solano and Contra Costa in California.
@@Cthippo1 I haven't been able to find a good description of the Great Easterns power plant, but I doubt it had independently powered paddles. She was pretty much made for going in a straight line and would need the aid of tugs anyway getting in and out of harbour due to her sheer size, so it wouldn't make much sense to complicate the power plant by having independent paddle-wheels.
@@Kennethah81 I read a description years ago, and IIRC Brunel did actually have independent shafts. In part due to steering, in part due to not having anything that could actually turn both wheels at the same time.
A very impressive ship that survived incidents that would have sent many other vessels, even warships, down to have a long chat with Davy Jones.
Brunel was a man with incredible vision and drive.
Interesting and iconic ship, seemingly too big for the layperson to appreciate, but finding niche jobs suited to her size and surviving catastrophes and storms because of her size. In this case, size mattered.
oh yeah, people often joke that the Great Eastern rock took more damage than the ship did.
The Great Eastern would not see meaningful competition in size until the RMS Oceanic launched in 1899 (beating her length at 215m), and was not beaten in general tonnage by a passenger ship until the RMS Celtic in 1901. The first major leap in size far over the Great Eastern was the Lusitania in 1907.
I would think today's modern aircraft equivalent of the Great Eastern would be the Airbus A380. Largest vehicles of the time, built for mass transport but became white elephants because of economics.
One idea was forty years ahead of its time. The other forty years behind its time.
I think it also has a lot in common with the H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose". (= Brilliant but probably mad inventor builds wildly-oversized machine on spec that proves to be unsuited for its original purpose, due to changes in technology and economic conditions combined with weaknesses in the engineering of the design).
"Why not all three?"
This is how I feel when considering what to have for dessert.
One of the greatest ships ever built. Really, a much greater accomplishment than the titanic. 1858-amazing!
Episode request: Have you considering doing a special about the original Enterprize, the French sloop captured by the British on her first voyage? Or even a history of every ship name Enterprise up to the second world war.
A little armor, a lot of guns and a couple of frigates as lifeboats and you have the floating colony domination complex.
For such an iconic ship, less than 7 mins seems very understated.
outside of the highlights mentioned there was little else to talk about with it…it was simply huge and had a lot of bad luck hut not much else interesting
At 13, in 1963, I read "The Great Iron Ship" and promised myself that I would one day take a Brunel tour of England. I realized that last winter. I made my first stop at the remains of the bow launching ramp, uncovered in the Isle of Dogs. I visited the Brunel Museum, the National Maritime Museum (throwing in the Imperial War Museum and the Greenwich Museum) and then drove through southern England, visiting the Brunel Bridges (Royal Albert, etc.) and the Brunel Museum and the "Great Britain" in Bristol. I will be returning this summer to visit the railroad tunnels and surviving broad gauge rolling stock. I will also be visiting various Victorian pumping engines and other artifacts.
I will add a Brunel story of my own. There is a wonderful steak house, The Angus Barn, in Durham, North Carolina. They had, like everywhere, doused the smoking lamp- no more upstairs cigar bar. I mentioned this to our waiter and he led us through the kitchens to a private domain, "The Meat Locker", a spare cold storage room outfitted to serve cigars and after dinner drinks. One wall had a well executed mural, copied from the famous photo of Brunel in front of the chain braking drum. The painter didn't realize that he was sporting his 25-cigar case, held by the diagonal strap across his barrel chest. The server saw my interested smile and asked "We don't know who that is. Do you know? People ask all the time." Oh, yes, now they know.
The Great Eastern, where madness & greatness collide with genius. Accept no substitutes.
Brunel's masterpiece or monsterpiece? Remember reading stories about her way back when. The "story" goes that a riveter and his assistant vanished during construction. After the ship was finished and for the rest of her career reports of strange pounding sounds would be made, but a source could never be found. Even when being scrapped the pounding sounds were heard. But then one day they opened another area of the double hull and found a gristly sight, the corpses of the long lost riveter and the assistant. After that there were no more reports of strange pounding sounds.
As you can guess, the veracity of the story is highly questionable. But lethal industrial accidents during large projects are a real thing. sm
I like the story, it teaches to follow security guidelines and explaines the curse the ship was carrying.
It seems like we now know, who senator Tillmans real Father was :D
I came in here to make jokes but blimey that's a beautiful ship with a wonderful history!
You should do the USCGC Eagle it was orginally constructed in 1936 Germany and named the horst wessel and the us took ownership of it in 1946 and lastly it is still in service
They could put the paddles in reverse and the propeller ahead, so that with the ship stationary there was enough flow over the rudder to make it effective. In this way, the ship could turn on the spot.
And for all the people using metric: 700 feet are around 213 meters.
Hold up, this thing was just 56 meters short of the Olympic class length? Holy shi-
Oh you mean, the rest of humanity outside UK and US?
Only 7,000,000,000+ people?
😉
@@indyrock8148 Yes, that small amount.
@Homeless Home Movies wait, im worthless?
I prefer Imperial measures ... but then I'm English . ☺
A ship before her time a few years later and she would have been converted in to the first super carrier :)
Her max speed was only 14kts, and the Wright Flyer was 50 years in the future.
The son : Johnston
The father : Warspite
The Holy Spirit : Great eastern
Better to put in the Grey Ghost rather than the Great Eastern
@@wilsonriley1856 Well there's that, yes. Unless you prefer HOOD as it clearly became a Spirit.
@@scottgiles7546 too soon good sir, too soon.
The Father: Great Eastern
The Son: Warspite
The Holy Spirit: Johnston
@@kenduncan3221 Its been like, 100 years
I always bring up the Great Eastern any time people talk about Titanic’s cutting-edge safety features and engineering. This ship was built just over 50 years before Titanic, shrugged off the same kind of accident that sank Titanic, and implemented a lot of the safety features synonymous with Titanic (water-tight bulkheads, double-lined hull on the ship’s keel) more effectively. It makes the Titanic’s story even more tragic: in Great Eastern, the Titanic’s builders had a precedent for how to implement the safety measures the right way, and even concrete evidence of those features working, yet decided not to implement them the way Great Eastern had.
Brunel was an excellent Civil engineer but his own locomotive designs were atrocious. Daniel Gooch did all the heavy lifting in that regard.
+53 points 😉
His railway motive power solutions in general were atrocious. The pneumatic railway was a trully stupid idea.
Brunel designing railways: Oh yes, beautiful.
Brunel designing locos: Good god no it's awful
@@VersusARCH , Perhaps, retrospectively, but locomotive engines were in their infancy, the stationary pumping engine and tube combination was economical- especially because the line could have steeper gradients with this system. Train tests were conducted at over 70 mph! It's downfall was the reliability of the pipe's leather seals which froze solid in winter, and were chewed on by rats in summer.
Never thought Drachinifel would be reviewing a civilian ship
I had guns! So it wasn't a civilian ship! :) sm
He showed the dugout ship too.
@@molybdaen11 how do you know that the dugout was not a warship?
@@jefferyindorf699 Well, it had no sharp sticks attached to it :)
"Not even god can sink Titanic"
"Brunel, several decades prior; haha hold my beer"
There is a documentary called Seven Wonders of the industrial world, one episode focuses on this ship in great detail.
Badly damaged but carry on as if nothing have happened, I guess she had the soul of the grand old lady
"With 700 foot of plating damaged she sailed into New York without any passengers realising what had happened"
You can understand where the British got their sense of Pride and Arrogance from. :))
The time has come! The legend herself...is here! Loved the video! :D
I love your dry humor and excellent video on this awesome ship.
the buried parts of the ship were recovered in recent years and the funnel that blew off the ship in the explosion has been on display for 150 years…plus the original commissioning slipway survives in London and the anchor lost during the infamous rock collision was found and raised and resides in the US
There's the Great Eastern Rock too... it was named after the ship. :D Not much of a tourist destination since it's underwater though.
If I remember right, she was designed for the Australian run, where her size made sense.
And the irony is that she never went to Australia.
Reference the top mast being removed for use as a flag pole, have you ever considered doing an episode about how the rigging and masts of the old sailing ships were assembled and spliced together?
Yes, she is still there in part, buried in the mud off New Ferry. The outline of what’s left of her hull protruding from the sludge and sewage, coal scattered about the sand and an eerie air about the final resting place of this monstrous vessel that had the corpses of two platers sealed inside that double hull for three decades.
I first read about this ship in a book The Seven Wonders of The Industrial Age, iirc. The boiler explosions were interesting. The crew that died were cooked alive by the steam. They were able to get on deck where the folk were trying to help them. The muscle and skin slid off the bone like it would a cooked chicken. The explosion also revealed that inside the hull were entombed youths that were working with the riveters.
A part of me would like to think that, had he been present to witness the funnel of Great Eastern being launched by the boiler explosion, and been in better health, Brunnel WOULD have attempted to invent a ballistic missile and pitch it to the British military as a new weapons system. Hell, it might've even worked to some degree.
The legends I'd heard were that she was also notorious for persistent clanging noises that they were never able to stop. Something between the hulls.
Then, when she was being scraped, they discovered the bodies of 2 riveters that had accidently been sealed in between the hulls. One still clutching his hammer.
So basically, the one holding the hammer was still banging for hope of being found, just like years after he died? that's just, well, cursed/blessed? Maybe that's why great eastern was so cursed yet blessed
love the fact that parts of the ship still survives today.
IIRC the Great Eastern was also the first ship to receive daily news while at sea, as she rather predated radio. And while stringing hundreds of miles of cable behind you just to get the latest front page story is a tad impractical it does make for a cool 'first'.
While laying cable you needed to send and receive signals anyway so you could tell if the cable failed and the last bit needed to be taken up and repaired - so the operators back home might as well tap out newspaper stories, since they've got to be sending "something".
4:30
Ironcally The white star line (the company that owned the Titanic) is known for beaking her length record before anyone else irc
And also
Great eastern: funnel literally becomes a missile:
Also great eastern:
Tis but a scratch
And also fun fact about Brunel
One of the members of the family (probably this one) was associated with the Great Western Railway
Even having a gauge named after him: Brunel Gauge, or simply Broad Gauge
Truly ahead of her time
Damn this ship was a BEAST I mean seriously. Boiler booms, groundings, storms... Only thing she was missing really was the odd pirate attack. Though with the deck guns installed she'd likely have survived that too.
Good thing that coal is not explosive.
@@molybdaen11 Tell that to the USS Maine.
@@gregorywright4918 Coal Dust can explode.
But did someone seriously think today that the Main was not a inside job to declare war on spain?
When reading the OC I got this picture of pirates sailing their ship as fast as they can in shear panic from the GE trying to ram them.
The KEY to being a great engineer...obtaining SUCCESSIVE financial backers!
The only surprise about this channel is that he has not exceeded a million subscribers.
he isn’t a content farm like a few history channels are so his lengths put viewers off
Apparently, all a ship needs are guns on her deck and she's Drach material! :) I don't think a lot of people know about this massive giant.
I was gonna say "like if Howard Hughes built ships" but oh yeah, he was in on the Glomar Explorer. So I guess it's more "like if Howard Hughes had been born in Victoria's empire".
Im surprised there has never been a large scale replica made of the SS great eastern, or at least a ship paying homage to it.
Time to crowdfund a SS great eastern replica
Imagine if Brunel was an ancient Greek. He'd probably build an enormous trireme with 10000 oarsmen.
They are rumors of 3 decked ships of enormous sizes in Egypt of the ptolomerian age.
Look up the Chinese treasure fleet. You're welcome.
The biggest was a 'fortier' built by one of the Ptolemies. Best guess is it had two hulls and three tiers of oars - around 4000 oarsmen and sailors. Turned out - unsurprisingly - to be a white elephant, mainly used for show in Alexandria harbour.
OMG how is this the first time you're covering the greatest steamship ever? I kind of have an obsession with Brunelle's Great Babe.
The closest to five minutes five-minute guide that I've seen so far.
Yet another excellent episode Drach!
>be me
>Launches worlds largest (for the time) cruise ship
>immediately explodes
you forgot
>keeps going like nothing happened
@@mattm.4861 >Proceeds to break your bank account
>Hits rocks but is so strong nobody realises it
Ocean Liner. Cruise ships are very different beasts.
@@mattm.4861 Yea XD
>And then you had a stroke
Drachism of The Day: "That sent the forward funnel Skywards, as if Brunel had actually ALSO invented the first ballistic missile launcher..."
Episode Request: The French corvette Aconit from ww2, specifically its role in March of 43. My history teacher told the class a bit about when I was younger, he was friends with 2 of the Canadian sailors who were aboard at the time, and he told us about the reunions the crew had every year too (even with the U-boat survivors they rescued, they all bonded quickly in those couple of days despite being enemies).
I've visited the SS Great Britain - which was nice and interesting - but made me wish the Great Eastern had been saved as a museum ship.
The Great Eastern would have been large enough to _be_ the museum housing the Great Britain!
Probably the greatest ship ever to sail. Far ahead of it's time, capable, robust, oddly pretty too. (can you tell i'm a bit of a fan) Thanks Drach!
I do wonder what Brunel could achieve if he lived today. I'm sure we'd be on Mars in a decade or so. And we'd have nuclear powered trains.
Also the bit about the funnel accidently turning into a ballistic missile was something that I can imagine was absolutely terrifying to the people of the time. But now a days its just funny.
Tesla for the electrical systems and Brunel for the engineering side of things
@@RedtailFox1 Musk and Brunel together would be a fascinating meeting.
Brunel would have probably just built a bridge to mars :-D
One of my favorites. I remember reading about this beautiful ship when I was a boy.
Wow. That was crazy interesting. Didn't even know I wanted to know this... Cheers!
I want to go back in time as a seaman on the great eastern what a time to be a sailor. Have a great day everyone 😀
Not such a great time to be a stoker!
Your chance of death was greater than 50% on the SS great eastern so uh, at your own peril
Never have I thought in my lifetime that Drach would cover the Great Eastern this soon. I honestly thought it'll eventually pop up near winter or even near the end of the year.
But here I am, this would be great.
Excellent. Informative and concise
Thank you for this history lesson about a ship I knew of but knew nothing about. Brunel was the greatest engineer since Archimedes. Your channel is a public service , more than PBS or the BBC. Too bad they didn't make a museum of this ship.
Nice to see the photo of Brunel without his cigar photoshopped out.
Because of the difficulty in launching the "Leviathan," one clever newspaperman called her the "Leave 'er high-and-dry-athan."
they REALLY should have used a floodable dock.. but this was one of those thing Brunel had underestimated due to scale concerns.
This is what makes a RUclips what it should be, fantastic facts once again ! ! !
I understand my Great Great Grandfather, Augustus Cary, was an officer aboard Great Eastern. Later commissioned in US Navy during Civil War.
So what did he said about the first successful chimney launch in history?
As far as I know he was aboard when the boiler exploded. Don’t know his thoughts, I think he died shortly after 1900.