A Great British Ship

SS Great Britain is a ship worthy of the name ‘Great’. When launched in 1843, she was the biggest ship in the world, had an iron hull and was fitted with a steam-powered propeller. James Hendrie describes her career, which ended with her being placed on display in Bristol, the city where she was built.

Eighty years ago the famous iron-hulled steamship Great Britain was a sad rusting hulk in the Falkland Islands, but since then she has been rescued and restored, and is today a popular tourist attraction on display at the Great Western Dockyard in Bristol. Her story begins in the mid-19th century, when her construction came about thanks to the innovative thinking of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the Board of Directors at the Great Western Steam Ship Co (GWSSC), who supported the building of a purpose-built dry dock to build a major ship to sail across the Atlantic.

Brunel, who worked for the GWSSC as an engineer, had first designed the SS Great Western to a tried and tested design with a wooden hull and steam-driven paddles. Although the ship was a success, breaking speed records for the transatlantic crossing, the GWSSC directors wanted another ship built, and this time Brunel broke with convention and designed an iron-hulled leviathan.

Great Britain was a massive ship with several ground-breaking features. Brunel opted for a propeller rather than paddles, and used wrought iron for her hull. These were unheard-of innovations for the time, and there were questions about whether they would work. Her hull was made up of horizontal rows of wrought iron plates, each 6ft, known as strakes; they overlapped horizontally and were joined together by rivets. The vertical edges of the plates butted up with each other and the joints were covered by iron straps. Rivets were used to attach the straps to the hull plates.

To reduce the weight and therefore improve the speed of the ship, the lower hull plates were thicker than the ones further up. The plates formed the strong iron external shell of the ship, while internally 165 curved frames were fitted around 18in apart to strengthen the hull and help it keep its shape; the frames were held in place by pieces of iron packing attaching them to the ship’s hull.