Dan Snow's History Hit - SS Great Britain

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

SS Great Britain was the longest passenger ship in the world from 1845 to 1854, and now resides in Bristol as a museum. She was the brainchild of Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Steamship Company's transatlantic service between Bristol and New York City. In this pod, I was taken on a tour around this remarkable feat of Victorian engineering to hear how Brunel's ingenuity transformed the world. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Downstone's History. This is one of our reruns, one of our back catalogue podcasts from back when no one was ever listening to this podcast. Now there's millions of you every month so we wanted to show some of you some of the jewels that we created back in the old days. I went around a tour on SS Great Britain, Brunel's mighty ship, the biggest ship in the world when it was launched, just a complete industrial marvel. We're releasing the HMS Warrior documentary on History Hit TV. And to go along with that, we've just got a season of programs and podcasts that we're upping about the kind of huge engineering marvels of the early to mid-Victorian period. So check this one out.

Check this podcast out. And then go and check out History Hit TV, where all of your industrial engineering history needs will be met. You go to historyhit.tv. You enter the code POD1, you get a month for free in a month. After that, there's one pound, euro or dollar. And let me tell you what that's like.

That's like having a sort of Netflix just for history. A place where you can go and geek out for the rest of eternity. We've got hundreds of hours of documentaries on there. It's all happening. So please go and check that out on historyhit.tv. And enjoy this, the tour around the remarkable SS Great Britain. And more importantly than this, go and visit it when it's open and safe to do so because it is one of the treasures of Britain's remarkable stock of heritage buildings, ships and places. It's a wonderful place down in Bristol to go and visit.

In the meantime, enjoy the pod. In the meantime, enjoy the pod. My name's Nick Booth. I'm Head of Collections here at Brunel's SS Great Britain. Nick, this is one of the best museums on earth. It must be very exciting to have your job. It is, yeah, and thank you for saying that. Yeah, I love my job. Every day's different. Every day's a new adventure. Yeah. What is the SS Great Britain, for any insane people that haven't heard of it? So the SS Great Britain is Brunel's second ship. She's iron hold. She has a screw propeller. She is in dry dock permanently now in Bristol in the same dry dock where she was launched and built. She was launched in 1843. She came home to Bristol in 1970. And now she's a visitor attraction.

So people have heard of Brunel, greatest engineer of the industrial age, invented so much stuff. It's almost pointless listing it. But why do people think the SS Great Britain is one of his greatest achievements? She was so groundbreaking. So his first ship, the Great Western, was the first steamship built to cross the Atlantic. So this was the second steamship built to cross the Atlantic. She was the biggest in the world at the time. So she had to have a new dry dock built.

She has so many innovations. We can't really go into them now, but we're going to be looking around the ship in a second. We'll go to them then. And yeah, she was just an extraordinary feat of engineering, an extraordinary maritime and naval feat of engineering. And she's really sort of the great, great, great grandmother of all modern ships today. Let's go aboard. Right, Nick, we're walking down into the dry dock. What's so special about where the SS Great Britain is stored?

So she is in the dry dock in which she was built. So in 1970, she returned home from the Falkland Islands and actually came home to the exact place where she was built. The dry dock had to be built specifically for the ship. So it's another one of Brunel's engineering projects. And really, it's just a part of the whole ship, part of the experience. You come in, you walk down to the dry dock and you get to see the hull in the place where she was built in Bristol. And unlike, say, HMS Victory, this dry dock has been turned into an atmospherically controlled space. Now, is that for the preservation?

Yeah, so you might be able to hear behind me some humming. So we have two dehumidification units deep thought one and deep thought two and they're named after douglas adams book hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy um and yes we have to keep the environment within the dry dock within about 20 relative humidity so to give you an idea that's about the same dryness as the arizona desert next to us we have bristol harbor so outside the dry dock the atmosphere wants to be about 60% relative humidity so it's a really neat impressive piece of engineering. And there Ian now we can see the massive propeller. Tell me about the

drive of this vessel because that was quite innovative at the time wasn't it? Yeah so when the Great Britain started to be designed by Brunel she was originally going to be a paddle wheel steamship which he built one of those before that would have worked he knew it worked it would get across the Atlantic that would have made the shareholders money but in 1840 a new type of vessel visited Bristol and she was a screw steamer. Brunel saw this and wrote a report on it and then somehow, and he must have been a very persuasive man, was able to convince the shareholders of the Great Western Steamship Company, which was building this ship, to stop construction for six months,

allow them to hire this vessel and to carry out experiments on it. So cutting edgeedge innovation here and was that a success or did it add to price and not greatly increase performance? I know it was a success so the Great Britain's top speed was 12 knots and the screw propeller is much more efficient than a side paddle steamer so she'd use less coal she was quicker it was an easier ride as well so yeah massive success and in fact his report was so influential that side paddle steamers died out well they didn't completely die out but very quickly they changed to screw steamers. So one of the many things that Brunel did in his life was kill off the paddle steamer? Yeah so the navy not you know

the Royal Navy perhaps not best known for its cutting-edge technology at that time, very quickly adopted this. HMS Warrior was the first one. And they liked this because being a naval ship, it meant if you had a side paddle on the side, you had an exposed area which could be hit by gunfire, and you also had less space for guns. So this was quite a big innovation for them and obviously the ship's made of iron we can see the rivets here and the iron the iron sheets was that unusual at the time in in well 1840 when she'd been laid down yeah it was

unusual so his first ship the great western was wooden this uh the great britain was originally planned to be wooden but very quickly they changed to iron uh it was so innovative that um they weren't fully aware of all the issues that come along with it so there was a problem with navigation with compasses and also with the propeller and the iron hull they weren't really sure how to fully insure her so on her seventh voyage she actually ran aground in Dundrum Bay in Northern Ireland and she was massively underinsured. It ended up bankrupting the Great Western Steamship Company. And is that how the ship tragically ended up as a sort of barge,

a dismasted barge in the Falklands? Oh, no, no. So it was only her seventh voyage that she ran aground. She was then bought by someone else and transferred to the Australia run, and actually she made almost 50 voyages in total. It was only towards the very end of her life in 1886, so she had a huge working life. At that point she was a sailing ship, so a wind jammer,

so she had no engines at all, and she was taking coal from the UK to America. And on her last voyage she was trying to get to Panama, she couldn't go around the Horn, and eventually limped into the Falkland Islands and became a store ship for wool. So an incredibly long working life. Brilliant.

So we're standing on the stern of the main deck now. Is this still the course deck or is it all just one big main deck? I don't know. Okay, never mind. I mind ship geekery. We're standing on the stern of this beautiful ship now. The sun's out, the buntingting looks amazing all the flags are up on the mast one thing you notice nick is this has got a big funnel for the steam engine but it's also got lots of masts so it's going to transition yeah it's exactly at the transition between sail

power and steam power coming in and i mean quite understandably steam was such a new uh innovation and invention that brunel wanted to have both forms of travel, both forms of propulsion on his ship. In fact, his third ship, the Great Eastern, also had, as well as sails and a screw propeller, they actually had a side wheel as well. So it's just basically throwing all this technology at a ship to get it moving. And the passengers would have been allowed to walk on this deck, presumably, and exercise during their passage to New York.

Yeah, passage to New York, passage to Australia as well. So the captains were very keen to get the passengers to get off on deck, to air themselves if it was possible, because they thought it kept them healthy and kept the ship in better working condition. So the part that we're standing on now, actually, we wouldn't be allowed on if we were steerage passengers. This is just for the first class passengers. Is that what the white line is there?

Yeah, there's a white line there. And this is Victorian Britain. This is the Victorian world. So very sort of strict social classes. And you can't mix, except on Sundays, where if you're a Church of England, you could come from steerage. You could come to first class and have your religious service there. If you were Catholic, you'd have to go to steerage and that's where their service would be presbyterians were in second class in reality how much they use the sails compared to just sticking the engine on and powering across the Atlantic well it all depends where they're going

so the Great Britain could carry enough coal to travel to America just under steam alone. If she's going to Australia that's a much longer voyage. I think the longest it took was over 80 days and for that they'd mostly use sail and only use the steam engine if they hit a patch of no wind such as the doldrums and there we've got passenger accounts and diaries where they say they really enjoyed sort of steaming past these ships that were stuck. Nick's go below do you want to talk about the flags and how the fact that she set up like yeah let's quickly do that yeah so what's with all the flags they look very colourful they do look very colourful so the great britain as she appears from the outside is exactly how she looked when she was launched on 19th of july 1843 so we've got all sorts of pendants up it was

a really it was a big big day we had thousands of people came down to bristol to watch her the prince albert actually came on a special train to launch her as well and so we've got the royal pendant flying we've got a few different flags from different countries such as america from ambassadors who'd come here to watch as well and it's a really interesting story for when she was launched so the wife of a shareholder was responsible for throwing the champagne against the side to launch her. Now, unfortunately, she missed. I'm not totally sure how. I expect she was very nervous. There were literally a thousand people watching.

So Prince Albert, thinking quickly, picked up a champagne bottle from his lunch table and hurled it against the side to launch her. That's brilliant. Prince Albert, I suspect, always had a champagne bottle handy. That's brilliant. Prince Albert, I suspect, always had a champagne bottle handy. So this is a very light space, beautiful space, airy, running a huge, running almost half the length of the ship. What's this room here? So we're standing on the promenade decks. This is the first class, there's first class cabins either side of us.

And this is where first class passengers would be able to get their exercise if they weren't able to go on the main deck. And so all these cabins were, do we know anyone who was actually in any of these cabins, any of the journeys? Yeah, so everything on the Great Britain is based on original accounts. So we've got passenger diaries, letters, log books. So everything on here is based on history. I actually want to tell you about one cabin in particular, which we've really only just set up. So if we take you through.

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And we're looking at one cabin. It's got two bunks. It's set up for one particular passenger, and that's a man called E.M. Grace. So E.M. Grace was the older brother of the better known W.G. Grace. So E.M. Grace was also a doctor. He also played cricket for Gloucester and he also played cricket for England. And he was the only amateur player on the second ever tour of England in Australia. So the Great Britain carried the first and second ever England teams to visit Australia. And in his diary, he writes about his time on board, about taking exercise on the deck

where possible, playing cricket, running around and playing a few other games. He also talks about sharing a cabin with a man that he calls the first ever cricketing tourist. And this was a man called Sutcliffe. And Sutcliffe booked on the same passage as the England team to go out and follow them around Australia. So Sutcliffe was the first Barmy Army and he ends up in a cabin with the wicketkeeper. Yep. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure Sutcliffe couldn't believe his luck.

Imagine travelling all the way to Australia, 80 days with some superfan stalker in your cabin. Yeah, we know from Grace's diary that he didn't think much of Sutcliffe. At one point, Sutcliffe was leaning over the side of the shift and he lost his hat. Grace thought that this was extremely embarrassing for a gentleman to do.

Grace actually ended up lending him his own old red cap. Oh, my gosh. Did they win the tour? They did, yeah. Yeah, they did. And Grace actually was awarded a cricket ball by the rest of the team for excellent wicket-keeping.

Sutcliffe didn't affect his performance too much. This is a stunning room, isn't it? It is, yeah. So we're standing in the first-class dining saloon. Underneath the promenade deck. Underneath the promenade deck, yeah. And there's actually skylights here that go all the way up onto the deck deck so you get natural light in here as well

what a what a stunning room this is what happened in here so we're standing in the first-class dining saloon so this is under the promenade deck and there's actually skylights here that go all the way up onto the top deck so you actually get natural light all the way in so this is very different to conditions that they would have had in steerage where everyone was just sort of eating on their laps I imagine? Very very different yeah if you're a first class passenger you eat extremely well on the Great Britain. Around us we've got tables set up for dinner and lunches and dinner is three set two sets of knives, soup spoons, dessert spoons. There's its own champagne for the Great Britain as well.

You'd eat almost better than you might do on land. When the passengers were travelling to New York, presumably you could have fresh food on board. The journey time became so quick that it was almost a treat. Yeah, I mean, fresh food on board actually when you go into australia as well there was live animals on board for milk and eggs but also for slaughter and there's flowers and there's a bakery on board so you could bake your own bread so there was a lot of fresh food going all the way along did the ease of travel suddenly change the way people thought about crossing the atlantic did a whole new section of people start crossing the atlantic

who previously wouldn't have dreamed of it? Yeah, so originally we thought that, I mean, when you get a view of a ship crossing the Atlantic, you think it's so difficult that most people must be going to emigrate. And there certainly were people on the Great Britain who were going to America or Canada to emigrate. But actually you start, I mean, with ease of travel like this, you start to be able to know when you're going to arrive somewhere,

when you're going to leave somewhere. You can schedule things in. You start getting, I mean, a lot of travel like this, you start to be able to know when you're going to arrive somewhere, when you're going to leave somewhere. You can schedule things in. You start getting, I mean, a lot of businessmen are traveling for business. There's people going for pleasure, so they might go just as a tourist or maybe on a honeymoon. We get people going from Australia to the UK on honeymoon, if you can imagine that, over 60 days on a ship as part of your honeymoon. Wow. Well, you'd know by the time you arrived whether or not you were suited to be married to each other,

that's for sure. Well, we've just put our hard hats on, our high veers, and we've got to do the thing that I always love, which is come behind the scenes in this museum. We're down right at the bottom of the engine. We're looking up at a giant iron and steel beast stretching up above us, running the entire height of the ship.

This is a huge bit of kit to drive this ship. It's massive, isn't it? Yeah, so it's over three storeys. It goes all the way to the top of the ship. Isambard's original engine was based on a design patented by his father, Sir Mark Brunel, who was also a very good engineer. The engine was on the first seven voyages, but when the Great Britain ran aground in Dundrum

Bay in Northern Ireland, it was taken out to lighten the ship to get her off the sand. Does this engine still run? This is a replica, but you've made it so it can still run? It's a replica, but we have it running every day. We recently worked out that actually the

replica's now travelled further than the original engines would have. Guys, obviously it's impossible to justice this through me describing it, especially in my layman's terms. So there are photographs of this on the Facebook page and of course Dan Snow's history hit and pictures and everything. And then obviously on historyhit.tv you can see the video of this journey around SS Great Britain. I urge you to go and do so because this engine is spectacular. So we've also got behind us the thing without which the engine wouldn't work, which are all the furnaces. Yeah, so there were 24 furnaces on the ship originally.

They wouldn't all have been working at once, but the furnaces were fed by people known as firemen and also kept stocked with coal by what was known as trimmers. So these are two brand new jobs along with the engineer on board. So brand new when you put engines in a ship. And they were very well paid, extremely well paid actually, much better paid than a able seaman would have been although they didn't require as much skill they were very well paid because they were so it was so hot and dangerous so the firemen who were

responsible for feeding the fire worked on shifts of four hours and they were responsible for constantly shoveling coal in taking out the soot and embers and making sure the fire was working properly in here if this furnace was firing, we would be standing in between 40 to 60 degrees Celsius. So that's about the Sahara Desert. Now, sailors had a water ration of six pints a day. And for that, that was also drinking, that was also washing, that was cooking. So that was everything. Being a fireman, you didn't get any more water than a normal sailor.

What you did get was an extra ration of rum. So an ordinary sailor on the Great Britain would get a quarter pint of rum a day. A fireman would get another quarter on top of that. Just to make that dehydration worse, is there any figures on how many tonnes of coal they might shift in one... Is there any sense of how many tonnes of coal they might be moving in one day? When the ship was running its engines, they'd use about a tonne of coal every watch, so every four hours or so. Fantastic. Nick, that was a real treat. Thank you so much.

Let's just finish off the story of SS Great Britain. After doing the New York runs and then doing the Australia runs that we saw so much about on board. What happened to her after that? So after that, in 1882, she had her engines taken out. She was clad in wood and she became a sailing ship. And slightly ironically, she carried coal from the UK to San Francisco twice. On her third voyage as a sailing ship, she was going to Panama. She was taking coal from Penarth. And she was quite

old by that point unfortunately she struggled she couldn't get around the hall and she was caught up in a great storm she managed to limp into the falkland islands and there they assessed her and realized that it just wasn't worth uh economically speaking repairing her so she was sold to the falkland islands and used as a wool store until the 1930s and then even then she was too old, too knackered I suppose you say and she was taken round the corner into Sparrow Cove where she was scuttled and she lay there until 1970. She was a bit of a tourist attraction for the local Falkland Islanders. There's stories of them going and have picnics on board which must have been something quite interesting because it was basically full of bird guano and sort of rotting and not looking a great state.

1970, she was saved for the nation. She was brought back to Bristol and brought back to her dry dock where she was built on the 19th of July, which is exactly the same day as when she was launched. And now is one of the most popular museums in Britain so well done to everything you and your team have done thank you so much for letting me come on board that just in case people want to come and buy tickets how do they do that with your websites and Twitter's and everything so just search SS Great Britain where you can look for the website a look on Twitter at SS Great Britain we're also on

Instagram come up turn up on the day and buy a ticket. It gets you in for the whole year. We're open from 10 until 5.30 at the moment. Do it, people. It's brilliant. Thanks so much, Nick. See you next time. Thank you. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying, and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it, and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps, and basically boosts up the chart, which is good, and then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful.

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