Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: What was the SS Great Eastern used for?
Brunel knew her affectionately as the "Great Babe". He died in 1859 shortly after her ill-fated maiden voyage, during which she was damaged by an explosion. After repairs, she plied for several years as a passenger liner between Britain and North America before being converted to a cable-laying ship and laying the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866.[4] Finishing her life as a floating music hall and advertising hoarding (for the famous department store Lewis's) in Liverpool, she was broken up on Merseyside in 1889.
The building of the Great Eastern. at , pp.466–480, Survey of London volumes 43 and 44, edited by Hermione Hobhouse, 1994. on Facebook , in The Engineer, 16 September 1859. at the English Heritage Archive
The first regular steamship service from the west to the east coast of the United States began on February 28, 1849, with the arrival of the SS California (1848)" in San Francisco Bay. "California" left New York Harbor on October 6, 1848, rounded Cape Horn at the tip of South America, and arrived at San Francisco, California after a 4-month 21-day journey. SS "Great Eastern" was built in 1854–1857 with the intent of linking Great Britain with India, "via" the Cape of Good Hope, without coaling stops; she would know a turbulent history, and was never put to her intended use.
Another London and South Western Railway steamer, SS "Stella", was wrecked on The Casquets, Channel Islands, on 30 March 1899 with 112 fatalities. On 21 February 1907 the Great Eastern Railway suffered the loss of SS "Berlin", wrecked off the Hook of Holland with 141 fatalities.
As he was preparing for the launch, some of the directors joined him on the rostrum with a list of names for the ship. On being asked which he preferred, Brunel replied "Call her Tom Thumb if you like". At 12:30 pm Henrietta (daughter of a major fundraiser for the ship, Henry Thomas Hope) christened the ship Leviathan much to everyone's surprise since she was commonly known as Great Eastern; her name subsequently changed back to Great Eastern in July 1858.
The Weymouth Waterworks Company was established in 1797, and in 1856 the company employed Thomas Hawksley to convert Upper Mill on the Jordan in Sutton Poyntz into a pumping station to supply water to Weymouth. Following the fatal explosion of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS "Great Eastern" in 1859, the vessel was towed to the Isle of Portland and Weymouth Waterworks Company purchased the damaged ship's no. 1 funnel, subsequently using it in their filtration system. The funnel was decommissioned in 2004, and Wessex Water donated it to the SS "Great Britain" Trust in Bristol.
The first attempt at laying a transatlantic telegraph cable was promoted by Cyrus West Field, who persuaded British industrialists to fund and lay one in 1858. However, the technology of the day was not capable of supporting the project; it was plagued with problems from the outset, and was in operation for only a month. Subsequent attempts in 1865 and 1866 with the world's largest steamship, the SS "Great Eastern", used a more advanced technology and produced the first successful transatlantic cable. "Great Eastern" later went on to lay the first cable reaching to India from Aden, Yemen, in 1870.
James Henry Pullen's model of SS Great Eastern SS Great Britain SS Great Western Steering engine – Great Eastern was the first ship so equipped Transatlantic telegraph cable List of large sailing vessels
SS "Felixstowe" was a cargo vessel built for the Great Eastern Railway in 1918.
On the deck, 1857 Great Eastern, 12 November 1857 SS Great Eastern's launch ramp at Millwall Print referring to the difficulty of trying to launch Great Eastern, in the collection of The Mariners' Museum Magazine illustration ca. 1877 James Henry Pullen's model of SS Great Eastern A topmast salvaged from Great Eastern at the Kop end of Anfield, the home stadium of Liverpool F.C.
Like "Great Eastern", construction of the two Pacific Mail ships was to be plagued with financial difficulties, which threatened to bankrupt the shipbuilder. Unlike "Great Eastern", however, which was a commercial failure, "City of Peking" would go on to have a long and successful commercial career.
(account of his 1867 voyage on the Great Eastern) Edited by Andrew Kelly and Melanie Kelly, "Brunel – In Love With the Impossible", 2006 by Bristol Cultural Development Partnership, Hardback ISBN0-9550742-0-7, Paperback ISBN0-9550742-1-5
Although designed to carry emigrants on the far Eastern run, the only passenger voyages Great Eastern made were in the Atlantic. Angus Buchanan, an historian of technology comments: "She was designed for the Far Eastern trade, but there was never sufficient traffic to put her into this. Instead, she was used in the transatlantic business, where she could not compete in speed and performance with similar vessels already in service."[12]
In 1857, during the planning of the Suez Canal, it was thought that Great Eastern would not be able to traverse it, since she had a draft of 28ft (8.5m) and it was expected that the canal would be excavated to a depth of 26ft (7.9m).[10] In any event, when the canal was opened to shipping in 1869, Great Eastern was no longer in passenger service.
The three men set up a new company, the Great Eastern Steamship Company, and Great Eastern was chartered to the newly formed Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company for £50,000 of shares, and would be responsible for carrying out the necessary conversion work for the ship's new role, laying the Atlantic Cable.
Great Eastern left Liverpool on 17 August with 1,530 passengers on board and a substantial amount of freight which increased her draught to 30ft (9.1m).
After their use by the British Army ended in 1922, they were purchased by the Great Eastern Railway
The Great Eastern Railway was taken over by the London and North Eastern Railway company in 1923 with its interest in the Great Eastern Train Ferry Company. The new service was inaugurated on 24 April 1924 by Prince George, Duke of Kent.
SS "Great Yarmouth" was a freight vessel built for the Great Eastern Railway in 1866.
In 1917 she was purchased by the Great Eastern Railway and in 1919 renamed SS "Frinton". She was then acquired by the London and North Eastern Railway in 1923. She was sold in 1927 to Samos Steam Navigation Company in London and again in 1928 to D Inglessi Fils SA de Navigation, Samos.
SS Great Eastern was an iron sailing steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and built by J. Scott Russell & Co. at Millwall Iron Works on the River Thames, London. She was by far the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers from England to Australia without refuelling. Her length of 692 feet (211m) was only surpassed in 1899 by the 705-foot (215m) 17,274-gross-ton RMS Oceanic, her gross tonnage of 18,915 was only surpassed in 1901 by the 701-foot (214m) 21,035-gross-ton RMS Celtic, and her 4,000-passenger capacity was surpassed in 1913 by the 4,935-passenger SS Imperator. The ship's five funnels were rare. These were later reduced to four.
During 1859, when Great Eastern was off Portland conducting trials, an explosion aboard blew off one of the funnels. The funnel was salvaged and subsequently purchased by the water company supplying Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in Dorset, UK, and used as a filtering device. It was later transferred to the Bristol Maritime Museum close to Brunel's SS Great Britain then moved to the SS Great Britain museum.
Dudley's watercolor depicts a large piece of cable-laying machinery on the rear deck of the iron sail steamer "SS Great Eastern". The machinery was used to lay (also referred to as "paying out") the first transatlantic undersea cable. Upon its completion in 1866, the cable allowed telegraph messages to be sent across the Atlantic; these took minutes to travel between North America and Europe as opposed to the 10 days it took for contemporary mail carriers to make the crossing.
On leaving school, Fryatt entered the Mercantile Marine, serving on SS "County Antrim", SS "Ellenbank", SS "Marmion" and SS "Harrogate". In 1892, Fryatt joined the Great Eastern Railway as a seaman on . Fryatt's father had been the First Officer on . Fryatt rose through the ranks, serving on various ships. His first command was . In 1913, he was appointed master of .
SS "Berlin" was a steel ship, which was owned by the Great Eastern Railway and built for use on their ferry service from Harwich and the Hook of Holland, which the company had initiated in 1893.