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The Great Eastern (massive legendary iron steamship of the British Victorian period) c. 1858-1889

Even today, The Great Eastern is a legendary awe-inspiring construction in the minds of boat lovers everywhere.

The Great Eastern being built!

Built in 1858 on the River Thames in London by famed engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the massive iron steamship was 692-feet long, 82-feet wide, traveled at 14 knots and weighed 18,9000 tons!

Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Engineer. 5ft tall. Smoked 40 cigars a day!

Brunel was 5-feet tall, smoked 40 cigars a day and insisted there be 10 boilers fed by 100 furnaces onboard the ship, which there was.

The Great Eastern sailing the River Thames.

The Great Eastern necessitated a crew of 400 people and took some 4,000 paying passengers around-the-world without refueling.

Just the facts.

Tragedy struck in 1862 in Long Island Sound when The Great Eastern hit a great rock, which tore a huge, nasty, jagged 83-foot long 9-foot wide gash in the side of the ship.

The Great Eastern’s inauspicious end.

The sip was promptly decommissioned, used to lay transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866, became a floating dance hall for a short period then took two full years to dismantle and scrap by 1889.

 

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