A visit to our project partners at Brunel’s SS Great Britain

In this blog post, project RA Lucy Huggins describes the team's visit to one of our project partners, Brunel's SS Great Britain museum.

On a bright February day, the project team visited Bristol to meet with our partners at Brunel’s SS Great Britain. After being greeted by Isambard Kingdom Brunel at Temple Meads station, the team meandered past the magnificent parish church of St Mary Redcliffe to the Great Western Dockyard where we were met by Dr James Boyd, Head of Research and Deputy Director of the Brunel Institute.

Statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunel at Bristol Temple Meads Station

The SS Great Britain

Constructed in the Great Western Dock, and launched in 1843 in the presence of Prince Albert, selected international dignitaries, and crowds of onlookers from Bristol and beyond, Brunel’s SS Great Britain was the world’s first great ocean liner. An enormous iron ship with a 1000hp steam engine and a screw propellor rather than conventional paddle wheels, SS Great Britain was a pioneering marvel of maritime innovation; the first of her kind. She weighed 1,930 tons, was almost 100 metres long, and could carry 382 passengers and crew.

The SS Great Britain

Before setting sail for the Atlantic, the SS Great Britain toured several ports in the British Isles where she was greeted by thousands of people eager to see her. Eventually, in 1845, she made her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York. Whilst her construction provoked excitement about maritime travel, the SS Great Britain was soon in trouble as she ran aground near Ireland. In 1852, she was sold to Gibbs, Bright, and Co. who utilised her to carry emigrants to Australia. After some modifications, the SS Great Britain was able to carry up to 750 passengers, and, for the next three decades, she carried over 16,000 people across the seas.

In 1882, the SS Great Britain had yet another change of career: this time she was tasked with transporting coal and grains across the Atlantic to America. In 1886, she was badly damaged in a storm and sought refuge in the Falkland Islands, where she remained until 1970 when she was rescued by Ewan Corlett and an expert salvage team who eventually bought her home to Bristol and the Great Western Dockyard.

The Great Western Dock

The SS Great Britain Today

In 2005, the SS Great Britain was re-launched. However, instead of carrying thousands of passengers across the Atlantic, she remains in her dry dock where people from all over the world come to visit her. Now an important maritime museum, the SS Great Britain has been consistently ranked as one of Bristol’s top visitor attractions, and, following our visit, it is easy to see why.

There are extraordinary things to experience at the site. James guided us through the Brunel Institute, which holds material, artefacts, and collections that can be accessed ‘on demand’ (this means that anyone who is interested in maritime history can view items held there). These are precisely the kinds of records that are so important as we trace the country’s merchant shipping, maritime communities, and trade across the centuries. Nestled within the Institute are well-appointed seminar rooms and conference spaces.

The dry dock has been so sensitively restored to a working Victorian dockyard that it is almost possible to hear the calls of nineteenth-century coalheavers, carpenters, and charwomen - vital members of any maritime community - as they went about their labours.

The propeller

Scuttling holes on the hull from when the SS Great Britain was scuttled in 1937

Steel patching on the ‘great crack’; a repair essential for the 1970 salvage operation

Inside the ship, visitors can experience what life aboard was like for passengers, crew, and even animals. James took us through each deck which was crammed with evocative detail; sights, sounds, and even smells. Horses (not real ones) whinnied in the hold producing the occasional whiff of manure, women chattered in cramped second-class bunks and the team were delighted to encounter the ship’s ginger cat in the kitchen (again, sadly not a real one). Moving up through the decks bought us to the first-class areas; here we encountered mirrors, gilt furnishings, luxurious fabrics, private cabins, a large dining area where chairs could be pushed back to make a space for dancing, and the florally scented upper-class lavatories. There was even a surgeon who kept hours between 10am and 12pm each day.

Second-class berths

Samuel Archer, the ship’s surgeon.

Our maritime heritage is an important part of our history and identity; pioneers such as Brunel and John Smeaton rightly deserve their place in British history. However, the team at the SS Great Britain have also highlighted the importance of shipbuilders, dockworkers, the fetchers and carriers, the people who were so important in building the cultural identity of coastal communities. Labourers who worked in the dockyards finished their shifts and went home through the streets of Bristol to their families and their friends, bringing a little of the maritime world with them.  These stories, revealed by the work being done by the team at the SS Great Britain, help us to really understand English merchant shipping, maritime communities, and trade. We are very much looking forward to working closely with them.  You can find out more about the site, the ship, and the work that the team are undertaking here

The top deck

Further reading:

Johnson, B., ‘SS Great Britain’, Historic UK, https://www.historic uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/SS-Great-Britain/

Doe, H., SS Great Britain: Brunel’s Ship, Her Voyages, Passengers and Crew (Amberley Publishing, 2019)