The Press.
London, England, 1857-05-02 00:00:00

THE "GREAT EASTERN."

A DETAILED description of this leviathan, now
rapidly approaching completion, has appeared this
week in the columns of a contemporary. We subjoin
the substance of the article.

It is difficult, if not entirely impossible, for
the mind to appreciate and realise its immense
bulk at once. The visitor catches no glimpse
of it till he enters Scott Russell's yard, when,
though the ship is still at a considerable distance,
it seems suddenly to shut him in—a mountain
of metal across his path—while all around are
scattered ponderous masses of girders, funn els,
bulkheads, boilers, and machinery, like the debris of
some colossal iron world. So vast is the bulk of the
huge ark that from no one point, save at the river's
side, can the eye take in its whole proportions, and
even then its immensity is so great in comparison
with all the notions previously conceived of monster
ships that it seems to elude comprehension and
weigh upon the mind—a kind of iron nightmare—a
phenomenon, hard and unrealisable. It is useless
looking at it, so you try by details to bring the mind
to an approximation of its size, and wander about
the yard in search of familiar objects which may
restore to their equilibrium your disordered ideas of
proportion. On the ground lies something like a
field of red iron with a kind of edge of the same
material all round it, and on this you walk until you
find it to be the last and smallest of the bulkheads
or watertight compartments, and which in the course
of a day or so will be lifted bodily 100 feet into the
air, and placed in the stern of the ship. Again dis-
turbed in your fancies, you seek refuge in the con-
templation of a labyrinth of spokes and stays, a
semicircle of iron like the supports of a building—
wid-ir across than King William-street, larger than
the circus at Astley's, and which instinct soon tells
you can be nothing less than part of one of the
great ship's paddlewheels. By this time, halt' used to
the Brobdignagian world around, the visitor can
coolly walk down a couple of long iron tunnels,
which in lightness, cheerfulness, and general popula-
tion, remind him forcibly of the Burlington-arcade.
He knows these are two out of five of the ship's
chimneys, but is reconciled to the fact and feels that
on the whole they are quite what he expected.
So with a row of red buildings which at first look
like houses and seem the iron suburbs of the vast
edifice which towers above them. These are the
boilers, though the wildest ideas as to their use
seems to pervade the mass of visitors who peep in
at the manholes. They are evidently looked upon
(especially by the ladies) as mere iron technicalities
quite distinct from the ship, though useful in some
remote and unexplained degree—probably as models,
or as adjuncts to the captain's toilette. Each of
these boilers, however, weighs 45 tons, and is in-
tended to work at a pressure of 251bs. to the square
inch. Some have already been tested with the
hydraulic pump, with a force of upwards of 60Ibs.
per square inch, and proved so solid and faultless in
their construction that a pressure of 1001bs. might
have been applied with safety.
It is very difficult for any amount of description to
convey an adequate notion of a vessel which islß,ooo
tons larger than the largest ship in the world. It
may, perhaps, be gained by the visitor who walks to
the edge of the vessel, looks up and down the
Thames, surveys the domes of Greenwich Hospital,
hasa bird's-eye view on to the decks of large West-
Indiamen, and wonders at the diminutive proportions
of the old three-decker used as the Seamen's Hos-
pital. Or, better still, if he turns his glance from the
river and peers cautiously over the edge of the space
where the upper and lower saloons for the cabin
passengers by the Great Eastern are to be constructed.
It seems like looking from a housetop into some
ordinary metropolitan square, or the court of an
extensive French hotel, at the bottom of which even
the noise of the workmen is subdued, for they are

sixty feet beneath the spectator. In spite, however,
of these aids to appreciation of its size, one must
resort to figures at last in order to understand the
monster fully. Her length, then, between the per-
pendiculars is 680 feet ; length on the upper deck,
i;92 feet—within twenty-eight feet of double the
length of the height of St. Paul's, and more than
double the extreme length of the new United States'
screw.frigate Niagara, about which the Transatlantics
are talking so mush. The height from the bottom
of the ship to the underside of the planking of the
upper deck is fifty-eight feet; the extreme breadth
is eighty-three feet, or as wide as Pall-mall ; the
breadth across the paddleboxes 120 feet. Already
nearly 8,000 tons, or 600,000 superficial feet, of
wrought iron have been used in the 30,000 plates of
her hull. To secure these upwards of 3,000,000
wrought iron rivets have been welded in. Her
tonnage is within a few tons of 23,000. She will be
propelled by paddle engines of 1,500-horse power,
and screw engines of 1,800 horse power, giving a
total of 8,300-horse power, at a pressure of 25 lbs.,
though, of course, if necessary, she can work to a
force of upwards of 5,000 horses. For three feet above
the watermark the hull is constructed double (on
the cellular principle, adopted in the top and bottom
of the Britannia tubular bridge), the inner hull or
skin, as it is called, being two feet ten inches apart
from the outer. In this space, at intervals of six
feet, run longitudinal webs of iron plates, which are
again subdivided by transverse plates into spaces of
about six feet square. This gives an enormous
addition to the strength of the whole frame. At the
bottom the longitudinal webs are thicker, and the
spaces between them only about three feet square,
in order that whenever it is necessary to ground the
vessel for any repairs she will support her own
weight without strain or injury.
The draught of this monster will not be in pro-
portion to what might be anticipated of her enor-
mous tonnage; it will be something under that of a
screw throe decker, and is estimated at thirty feet,
with cargo on board. Her ordinary light draught is
set down at twenty feet. She will carry coals to the
extent of 11,379 tons ! In addition to these facts we
may mention that she will have six masts, three
square, and three fore and aft rigged, and ten
anchors. She will carry twenty large boats on deck.
In addition to these she will also carry, suspended
aft of her paddleboxes, two small screw steamers
100 feet long each, and of between sixty and seventy
tons burden. These will, of course, be raised and
lowered by small auxiliary engines, several of which
will be fixed on board for working pumps, hoisting
sails, weighing anchor, &c. Both the little screws
will be kept in all respects perfectly equipped for sea
and used for embarking and landing the passengers
with all their luggage, &c., alongside the wharf or
pier, whichever it may happen to be. This will be
onerous service, for the Great Eastern is fitted to
accommodate 800 first•class passengers, 2,000
second-class, and 1,200 third-class—in all, 4,000
passengers; or, if employed in the transport of
troops, she can carry, it is said, 10,000 men. She
will be ready for launching early in August next, and
able to take her first trial trip to America and back
about the middle of that month. She is expected to
realise a speed of at least twenty miles an hour, or
to accomplish the voyage from England to Aus-
tralia (between which countries she is to run) in
thirty days. Reckoning the cost at so much per
ton, it is said to be one of the cheapest vessels yet
constructed. The arrangements for the launching—
or perhaps we should rather say for her being
lowered gra Wally down an inclined plane into the
river—ard quite as extraordinary and as noteworthy
as the vessel itself. At present we cannot enter into
the details of the plan, which has been entirely de-
vised by the eminent engineer to whom the whole
merit of originating the first great idea of the vessel
is due—Mr. Brunel. We may mention, however,
that the launch will be by no means a slapdash affair
into the " native element," but a tedious operation
which will very probably occupy two or three days.
On these points, however, and on some others of
equal interest, we shall give our readers fuller
information as the great ship progresses towards
completion.