The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-09 00:00:00

PRICE 4D. STAMPED, SD•

are well aware that the enterprise which has
now so nearly reached its completion, has not
been attended throughout with unbroken prospe-
rity and success. There was a time of difficulty, a
time ...)f despondency—a time when success seemed
doubtful and failure more than prooable, and at
that time Mr. Campbell and his colleagues came
forward. They brought their commercial know-
ledge to bear, their knowledge of the requirements
of Indian and English commerce, an d they underto k
to ensure the commercial success of the work, pro-
vided mechanical success was assured. (Cheers.)
And they induced the capitalists of the country to
place faith in their exertions, and the result is that
which you now see around you to-day. (Loud
cheers.) I beg to propose, and I think we should
give it with all honours, " Prosperity to the Great
Eastern," and with that toast I shall couple the
name of Mr. Campbell and his co-,directors.
The toast having been duly honoured,
Mr. CAMPBELL acknowledged the toast, and
pointed out that if the great ship had been com-
pleted two years ago, hundreds of lives and lite-
rally millions of treasure would have been spared
in the late mutinyiin India. He said, speaking of
the Great Eastern acting as a kind of railway be-
tween this country and India, that it appeared to
be a kind of law that great discoveries were made
just at the critical moment when the machinery of
the world could not run smoothly without them.
When they considered that the trade of the EUst
represented the wants of nearly half the human
race, and was even then of the annual value of
£50,000,000 sterling, it was not an exaggeration
to say that, with the expansion which must 'take
place through railways, colonisation, and the entire
break up of all kinds of checks to commerce, the
great ship had been discovered just when she
became a necessity. (Loud cheers.)
Mr. Wei. JACKSON also expressed his hope in
the success of the great ship, and declared that he
supported it as a national enterprise, and not as a
source of individual profit. He could assure the
company that the interest felt in the success of the
Great Eastern was a national sentiment, spreading
wide and sinking deep amongst the poorest people
of the land, a fact of which they would be assured
when he told them that out of the £300,000 sup-
plementary capital, £50,000 consisted of subscrip-
tions of from one to five pour:ds sent in by domestic
servants, greengrocers, and costerrnongers, who
gave their money avowedly without expectation of
return, but solely in order that they might have
the pleasure of seeing the " big ship fairly at sea."
(Loud cheers.)
The '_ealths of Mr. Brunel and Mr. Scott
Russell were then proposed.
This toast was received with a burst of applause,
followed by several rounds of cheering, which
having subsided,
Mr. SCOTT RUSSELL rose and said—There was
one part of the toast which it was not at all a mat-
ter of embarrassment for him to acknowledge. He
was unhappily the only representative 'of the toast
present, and regretted extremely that ill-health
prevented Mr. Brunel from receiving that hom-
age to his extraordinary genius which, not un-
worthily, they had that day paid to him. He was
sure that it would be a source of gloat happiness
to him, upon his sick bed, to have conveyed to
him by his friends who were present the testimony
which had been borne to the grandeur of his con-
ception and to the extent of his genius. (Cheers.)
It was part of an original understanding between
Mr. Brunel and himself that they should never inter-
fere with each other in the duty to which they might
be specially called. It was part of his understand-
ing with Mr. Brunel that the original conception
of a large steam-ship to carry her own coal upon
the longest voyage, so as to avoid all the waste of
time and expense which was then standing in thr..:
way of the prosperity of steam navigation for long
distances, was absolutely and entirely Mr. Brunel's,
and not his (Mr. Russell's) in the smallest degree.
(Cheers.) It was true that very scam after the
thought struck Mr. Brunel, he came to him, and
said, "Now, I am not a ship-builder, and I am not
an engine-builder, and I come to you to see if you
will devote your mind and attention to the carry-
ing out of this problem to a, successful issue. You
and I will go together through the whole undertak-
ing, pari passu, you shall o.esign the ship according
to your own lines, make the engines upon your own
plan, and construct the ship according to the best
of your experience and knowledge, but we shall
always agree in this—that I am the father of the
undertaking, and that I had the original concep-
tion." (Cheers.) To this he (Mr. Russell) agreed,
and to this he was happy now to bear testimony,
for nothing had tended more to his unhappiness
than upon many occasions to have received com-
pliments for the invention, or original idea, when
he could assure the company he was totally inno-
cent of it. His responsibility was the construction,
as a naval architect, or the lines of the ship. If the
ship was slow, if she had bad qualities, the responsi-
bility was his alone ; if in regard to her structure
she was ill-made, ill-planned—if her materials were
ill-disposed or ill put together—that was his fault ;
and if her engines did not—her paddle-wheel en-
gine especially—work well—if her boilers were not
equal to their work—then he was almost entirely
the only man to blame. Messrs. Bolton and Watt
were there to speak for themselves, and would take
the responsibility of their own engines. With re-
spect to the manner in which he had endeavoured to
carry out his work, he had made a resolution, which
he was happy to say he had maintained, that he
would not permit, so far as he was concerned, any
new scheme, invention, or crotchet of his own to
enter into the construction of the ship ; and also, if
possible, that no new, clever, or ingenious, but un-
tried invention of his friends should have anything
whatever to do with it. He therefore confessed at
once that there was no novelty in the construction
of the ship. (Cheers.) In building her he had
thought it the best and safest course to make the
lines the exact shape of those of his previous vessels
which had proved most successful—to make the
mechanical structure an exact copy, so far as cir-
cumstances would allow, of those vessels which he
had constructed, and which had been successful ;
and also to make the engines exact copies of those
engines which be had built for similar purposes,
but not on the same scale. There was not, therefore,
so far as he was concerned, a single untried expe-
riment in the whole of the structure which the
company saw before them. (Cheers.) In regard to
the success of the great ship he must say, that while
Mr. Brunel was entitled to the original idea,
and while he was himself entitled to the exer-
cise of any professional experience which he might
have devoted to its construction, it was to his old
friends, Captaili Ford and Mr. Yates, that they were
mainly indebted for having obtained the means for
carrying out the undertaking. It was those gen-
tlemen, in conjunction with Mr. Brunel and him-
self, who, at the suggestion of Mr. Brain and Mr.
Campbell, first brohght the whole matter of the
reorganisation of the company under the notice pf
the original board. (Cheers.) If this ship was
successful, she would not be the last of her kind.
There had been a great difficulty with respect to
the launching of this vessel. Upon this point he
wished to say that the mode of launching had
nothing whatever to do with the principles on
which the ship was constructed. That was entirely
an after thought. The plan tried was one which, he
considered, ought never to have been adopted. It
would never, he hoped, be resorted to again for
the launching of any ship. (Cheers.) The
Great Eastern might have been launched
with a great quantity of grease and oil
upon smooth oak planking—a mode which
succeeded every day in practice, and with
respect to which there was no difficulty whatever.
(Cheers.) In future, therefore, whenever any large
ship like this was constructed it would not be at
all necessary to invent any new method of launch-
ing, but simply to adhere to the good old plan of
shipbuilders' of oak planking and plenty of oil and
grease. (A laugh.) He thought it important, as
early2ls t oi
in
the
isnhsi
tpa
nwtr
alndd go''
ndlodw n
September, that it should be understood that she
maketh e her rivertti aolnt rlipe
never was intended for short voyages ; and though
she would be tested on a short voyage, she was not
to be finally tried by such a trip. What the great
ship must bo tried by. was that for which she was
originally intended, viz., a voyage to Australia or
India in thirty-three or thirty-six days. (Cheers.)
It was most important to bear this in mind, because
if our distant colonies could find themselves
brought by the ship within thirty-three or thirty-
six days of the mother country, they would not re-
main long satisfied without having a fleet of
such ships, and without making such commer-
cial arrangements as would admit of their being
established to make regular voyages. (Cheers.)
Thankcompany for the attention with
which they
theh
had listened to his statement of the cir-
cumstances under which that large infant had with
ea much cost been brought into the world, Mr.
Russell concluded by expressing his gr ititude for
the honour which had been done to him by pro-
p
Bosinrunel g his health in connection with that of Mr.
Several other toasts followed, and the company
did not separate until the evening had far ad-
vanced.