Lot Essay
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Arguably the greatest and certainly the most innovative engineer of the nineteenth century, Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born on 9 April 1806, the son of Marc Brunel, himself a distinguished engineer who had fled Paris after the French Revolution and eventually settled in England in 1799. After finishing his education in France, young I.S.K. returned home in 1822 to begin work in his father's office, soon after which the family moved to Blackfriars when Brunel, Senior was appointed Engineer to the Thames Tunnel project. In 1829, I.K.B. received his first significant commission and, the following year, won the competition to design the bridge over the Avon Gorge at Clifton (Bristol). The next two decades were his most productive and saw the building and triumphant opening of the Great Western Railway, the completion - after many years of difficulties - of the Thames Tunnel, the creation of two revolutionary steamships (the Great Western followed by the Great Britain), and the commencement of the famous Royal Albert Bridge over the Tamar at Saltash. By comparison, the 1850's were filled with disappointments and overshadowed by the calamitous problems of the ill-fated Great Eastern which not only broke I.K.B's health but also ruined him financially and undoubtedly contributed to his premature death on 15 September 1859.
The Great Eastern
Following the considerable success of his two earlier steamships Great Western (launched 1837) and Great Britain (launched 1843), the idea of his "great leviathan" - a huge steamship capable of sailing to Australia and back without refuelling - was first proposed by Brunel in March 1852. The scheme being accepted by his backers, he was appointed Engineer to the Eastern Steam Navigation Company that July and the contract placed with John Scott Russell's yard at Millwall for a vessel costing #377,200. Work commenced early in 1854 but was plagued by financial as well as technical problems from the outset. Quite apart from the continually escalating costs exacerbated by Scott Russell's mysterious bankruptcy, the greatest difficulty arose as the ship - by now named Great Eastern - approached completion; built sideways-on along the Thames foreshore in the absence of any dock or slip large enough to take her, her colossal dead weight of almost 19,000 tons made her impossible to move by conventional means. After several unsuccessful attempts to launch her, Brunel appealed to engineering colleagues for help, amongst them Robert Stephenson, and finally, on 31 Jaunary 1858, Great Eastern was floated free.
By then, however, the ship's owners were bankrupt and, lacking the funds to finish her, sold their creation to the newly-formed Great Ship Company which resolved to fit her out for service on the North Atlantic. Finally completed in the autumn of 1859, Great Eastern ran her sea trials that September - as Brunel himself lay dying - but was then laid up until the following summer before sufficient money could be found to allow her to commence scheduled sailings. On 17 June 1860, Great Eastern cleared Southampton for her maiden voyage to New York but she was never to be a commercial success despite having cost almost #1,200,000. The whole concept of a gigantic double-hulled iron steamship with paddle and screw propulsion aided by 55,000 square feet of sail was far ahead of its time and the technology of the day was simply unable to cope with the demands Brunel imposed upon it. Beset by seemingly endless misfortune, her career as a passenger ship lasted a mere three years before she was withdrawn for conversion to a cable-layer only to achieve ultimate fame by laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866. Thereafter, brief intervals of employment were interspersed with long periods of inactivity until eventually, after ignominiously changing hands a number of times, she was sold for scrapping in 1888. Even then her legend lived on, for not only did she take almost three years just to dismantle but her vast dimensions remained unsurpassed until the launching of the Cunarders Lusitania and Mauretania in 1906. When finished, Great Eastern had been three times the size of anything else afloat; her reign as the largest vessel in the world lasted fifty years and, in many respects, she was one of the most remarkable ships ever built.
Whilst the scale of these drawings is far too small for them to have been of practical use to Scott Russell's shipwrights during the actual construction of the Great Eastern, the precise purpose for which they were prepared remains open to conjecture. The most plausible suggestion is that they were commissioned as a boardroom display by the ship's owners, either the original Eastern Steam Navigation Company or its successor The Great Ship Company, the former being the more likely given their striking similarity to drawings published in various promotional pamphlets such as those by William Smith and James Reynolds in 1856. Equally elusive is the identity of the individual who prepared the drawings and, in the absence of any distinguishing marks upon them, even the name of Brunel himself has been ascribed to them. This seems highly unlikely, however, on the basis that Brunel's drawing technique was not only much more impulsive and prone to annotation, but the time needed to execute these particular drawings so perfectly would have been far too great given his other commitments. A more feasible suggestion is that they were produced by the draughtsmen in Brunel's own Duke Street engineering offices, albeit under their master's general guidance but without his direct personal involvement.
Arguably the greatest and certainly the most innovative engineer of the nineteenth century, Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born on 9 April 1806, the son of Marc Brunel, himself a distinguished engineer who had fled Paris after the French Revolution and eventually settled in England in 1799. After finishing his education in France, young I.S.K. returned home in 1822 to begin work in his father's office, soon after which the family moved to Blackfriars when Brunel, Senior was appointed Engineer to the Thames Tunnel project. In 1829, I.K.B. received his first significant commission and, the following year, won the competition to design the bridge over the Avon Gorge at Clifton (Bristol). The next two decades were his most productive and saw the building and triumphant opening of the Great Western Railway, the completion - after many years of difficulties - of the Thames Tunnel, the creation of two revolutionary steamships (the Great Western followed by the Great Britain), and the commencement of the famous Royal Albert Bridge over the Tamar at Saltash. By comparison, the 1850's were filled with disappointments and overshadowed by the calamitous problems of the ill-fated Great Eastern which not only broke I.K.B's health but also ruined him financially and undoubtedly contributed to his premature death on 15 September 1859.
The Great Eastern
Following the considerable success of his two earlier steamships Great Western (launched 1837) and Great Britain (launched 1843), the idea of his "great leviathan" - a huge steamship capable of sailing to Australia and back without refuelling - was first proposed by Brunel in March 1852. The scheme being accepted by his backers, he was appointed Engineer to the Eastern Steam Navigation Company that July and the contract placed with John Scott Russell's yard at Millwall for a vessel costing #377,200. Work commenced early in 1854 but was plagued by financial as well as technical problems from the outset. Quite apart from the continually escalating costs exacerbated by Scott Russell's mysterious bankruptcy, the greatest difficulty arose as the ship - by now named Great Eastern - approached completion; built sideways-on along the Thames foreshore in the absence of any dock or slip large enough to take her, her colossal dead weight of almost 19,000 tons made her impossible to move by conventional means. After several unsuccessful attempts to launch her, Brunel appealed to engineering colleagues for help, amongst them Robert Stephenson, and finally, on 31 Jaunary 1858, Great Eastern was floated free.
By then, however, the ship's owners were bankrupt and, lacking the funds to finish her, sold their creation to the newly-formed Great Ship Company which resolved to fit her out for service on the North Atlantic. Finally completed in the autumn of 1859, Great Eastern ran her sea trials that September - as Brunel himself lay dying - but was then laid up until the following summer before sufficient money could be found to allow her to commence scheduled sailings. On 17 June 1860, Great Eastern cleared Southampton for her maiden voyage to New York but she was never to be a commercial success despite having cost almost #1,200,000. The whole concept of a gigantic double-hulled iron steamship with paddle and screw propulsion aided by 55,000 square feet of sail was far ahead of its time and the technology of the day was simply unable to cope with the demands Brunel imposed upon it. Beset by seemingly endless misfortune, her career as a passenger ship lasted a mere three years before she was withdrawn for conversion to a cable-layer only to achieve ultimate fame by laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866. Thereafter, brief intervals of employment were interspersed with long periods of inactivity until eventually, after ignominiously changing hands a number of times, she was sold for scrapping in 1888. Even then her legend lived on, for not only did she take almost three years just to dismantle but her vast dimensions remained unsurpassed until the launching of the Cunarders Lusitania and Mauretania in 1906. When finished, Great Eastern had been three times the size of anything else afloat; her reign as the largest vessel in the world lasted fifty years and, in many respects, she was one of the most remarkable ships ever built.
Whilst the scale of these drawings is far too small for them to have been of practical use to Scott Russell's shipwrights during the actual construction of the Great Eastern, the precise purpose for which they were prepared remains open to conjecture. The most plausible suggestion is that they were commissioned as a boardroom display by the ship's owners, either the original Eastern Steam Navigation Company or its successor The Great Ship Company, the former being the more likely given their striking similarity to drawings published in various promotional pamphlets such as those by William Smith and James Reynolds in 1856. Equally elusive is the identity of the individual who prepared the drawings and, in the absence of any distinguishing marks upon them, even the name of Brunel himself has been ascribed to them. This seems highly unlikely, however, on the basis that Brunel's drawing technique was not only much more impulsive and prone to annotation, but the time needed to execute these particular drawings so perfectly would have been far too great given his other commitments. A more feasible suggestion is that they were produced by the draughtsmen in Brunel's own Duke Street engineering offices, albeit under their master's general guidance but without his direct personal involvement.