The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1883-08-22
LONDON LETTER.
Froia Our Regular Correspondent
I,oxDoS- luna % 1SS:

Froin Our Regular Correspondent.
LONDON, june 20. 1883.
You will hear with interest that
there is some probability of once
more beholding the famous levia-
than steamship, the Great Eastern,
making regular passages to and
from the river Thames. Years have
elapsed since the huge fabric was
nearer to the City Of London than |
the Midway. Her bulk is not like
ly to allow her to come very nigh,
for there are bends in the river this
side of Gravesend which would
prove rather dangerous navigation
to a vessel that is more than an
eighth of a mile long. 1t is stated
that a company has been formed to
purchase the vessel, and that she
will be employed in the coal trade
between the the Firth of Forth and
the Thames. As much as twenty
thousand tons of coal, it is calcula-
ted. can be slowed away in her vast
interior in sacks. No one need
doubt the Great Eastern's carrying
capacity, though the use to which
she is to be put at last seems strange,
and not without pathos to those
who can recall the dreams of her de-
signers and builders, and the enthu-
siasm and excitement which her
colossal form awakened as she lay
broadside to the river at the ship
yard 80 years ago.
1t would be strange if she would
prove a success in this, her latest
undertaking. So hopeless did she
seem as a commercial venture, even
before she was launched, that Mr..
Lindsay, the shipowner, relates that
when Mr., Brunei asked him, How
viii she pay ?" Unanswered that she
would never pay as a ship, and that
the best thing to do would be to
send her to Brighton, dig out a hole
in the beach and bed her there, and
make promenade of her, with a
grand hotel in her tween decks,
where room could be found for salt
water baths and dancing saloons.
If she would pay" now, the triumph
will come late, but it will be tri-
umph for the great old ship, for all
that.
1t is thirty years ago since she was
built. and during that time ship
building mas made gigantic strides
as respects dimensions Of craft;
therefore, if we in this age cannotre-
feet without wonder upon the mass
of material which entered into the
Great Eastern's composition, what
must have been the amazement and
the enthusiasm excited by her in
the public of the age to which she
fairly belonged She was furnished
with engines for her paddles and
screws whose combined power was
equal to eleven thousand horses.
Her interior was designed to afford
Accommodations for four thousand
passengers. As even with a speak
ing trumpet at his mouth her cap
tain was unable to make his orders
heard she was fitted with semaphores
for day use and colored lamps at
night, and also an electric telegraph,
bv which the commander made his
orders known. Her saloons in their
original form were truly magnificent,
furnished with massive looking
glasses, ornamented panels, nobly
decorated columns, sofas covered
with Utrecht velvet, portiers of rich
crimson silk to all the doorways, and
so forth. She carried twenty large
boats, and two small steamers, each
one hundred feet long. Under full
sail she spread six thousand five
hundred yards of canvass. There
were ten anchors and eight hundred
fathoms of chain cable, whilst her
five tunnels were each one hundred
feet high, with ten furnaces to every
paddle boiler, of which there were
ten.
On the seventeenth of June 1860,
she started on her first voyage across
the Atlantic, with only thirty-six
passengers aboard. Her second pas
sage to America was made in the
May OF the following year, the dis
tance being made in ten days, her
greatest speed never exceeding four
teen-and-a-half knots. She was next
employed in transporting about two
thousand troops TO Quebec, and then
followed another Transatlantic voy-
age with four hundred passengers on
board. On this occasion a most mel
ancholy account of her behavior in
storm was given by the passengers
who stated that, tall as she was, she
rolled her quarter boats under water,
and that the angle her decks pre-
sented was upwards of forty-five de-
grees. She is mainly memorable as
a triumph of engineering and con-
structive skill. At this moment she
is reported to be in as good condition
as she was at the time other launch,
and in her iron finds one of the most
signallv successful illustrations of
its serviceableness in shipbuilding,
W J. nv, of ooo1 o,,ality a,I INIT 20