The SS Great Eastern

[tilly50]

The great Eastern is a classic tale of an unlucky "doomed" ship, but how much of the tale is true?

She was succesful in the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable.

Where there really two skeletons found when she was broken up at Birkenhead? Does anyone know of a reliable reference to this?

How many other ships had disasters leading to death aboard them without getting a bad reputation?

Was there any connection to her re-naming (she was initially going to be called The Leviathan) and her reputation as an unlucky ship?

Is it all the fact that she was deemed a white elephant, too big to be economically viable until her size proved to be an asset for holding the thousands of miles lengh of cable?

 

[whoisquilty]

Maybe the cause was the po'ed ghosts of the two workers entombed in her hull.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Found this summary on the skeletons business:

"THE SKELETON(S)

Much has been made of the riveter and possibly his boy who were supposedly sealed up between the two hulls of the Great Eastern during construction. When the ship was broken up the breakers made no mention, in their records, of finding a skeleton, nothing was reported in the local press at the time and there are no records of an inquest being held following such a discovery. Brunel twice ordered the space between the two hulls to be cleaned out once before the ship was launched, following the pumping out of the water pumped in to stop her floating off. The second inspection and clean out was made in June 1859 during fitting out. Should anyone have become trapped between the hulls they could have escaped through the inspection hatches in the inner hull."

SOURCE: link

(Sorry for the huge URL)



edited by TheQuixote: fixing link

 

[tilly50]

Thanks EnolaGaia, the link is just what I was looking for. She does seem to have been unlucky financially, but she is justified by her services to the cable laying, an awsome feat for the time.
My family had items from the breaking up of the Great Eastern and her time on the Mersey is part of my family history (at least in the tale telling of the older members when I was a child).

 

[rynner2]

I thought I'd posted about this before, but it turns out I wrote a letter to FT about it after an article played up the 'unlucky ship' angle.
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 384#226384
and the following two posts seem to be all that remain on here!

And I must have composed the letter on my old computer, which has since died, so I now have no record of what I said to FT!

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I've long been fascinated by the GREAT EASTERN and approximately 30 years ago sold a feature article on it to an American occult magazine, the name of which I cannot bring to mind.

You have to understand that at the time of its design and construction the GREAT EASTERN was pretty much a science fiction project, something right out of the pages of Jules Verne.

Much that is described as a "curse" was simply the result of this this great "20th Century" ocean liner being engineered 50 to 60 years before its time. There were thus design problems galore, although the vessel was eminently seaworthy.

A comparison might be a moon rocket actually built and operated in the 1920s, perhaps Herman Oberth's design from Fritz Lang's FRAU IM MOND.

The GREAT EASTERN had electric lights in the main salons. Alas, they were arc lights so bright as to cause eye damage.

The single funniest thing about the ship is that nobody bothered to build a door between the galleys and the dining salon!

As for the skeletons trapped inside the double hulls, there's them that says yes and them that says no.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Regarding the two workers supposedly trapped between the GREAT EASTERS's double hulls during construction:

As the story's usually related, an older riveter and his apprentice discovered themselves trapped between the hulls. They hammered with their tools but the general noise of construction was so intense that they were not heard.

But was construction carried out 24 hours a day? If not, as soon as the end-of-shift steam whisle blew and work ceased, the two trapped workers would have been clearly heard.

 

[Fizz32]

This is quite fascinating stuff, I had no idea about this ship, despite having seen the name on pubs and hotels in the Wirral area all my life.

The flagpole from the GE is now at Liverpool FC's ground, Anfield.

I have read one reference to "a few pieces being seen on the Wirral", but can't find if this refers to such artefacts as the flagpole, or if there are any remains at New Ferry or Rock Ferry that could be photographed. If anyone can find a more specific reference, I'd love to go and see if I can find them.

 

[Creamstick1]

There is a bulding just along the street from me called The Great Eastern - it's a closed-down homeless shelter that was previously a hotel, then before that was a homeless shelter, then before that was the Alexander Cotton Mill.

It's a beautiful old Victorian building (well it would be if the outside was cleaned up). It was most recently used to house an exhibition about the previous homeless residents, who were re-housed when the place closed.

http://www.hiddenglasgow.com/GreatEastern/index.htm

 

[Boulters_Canary]

This is quite fascinating stuff, I had no idea about this ship, despite having seen the name on pubs and hotels in the Wirral area all my life.

The flagpole from the GE is now at Liverpool FC's ground, Anfield.

I have read one reference to "a few pieces being seen on the Wirral", but can't find if this refers to such artefacts as the flagpole, or if there are any remains at New Ferry or Rock Ferry that could be photographed. If anyone can find a more specific reference, I'd love to go and see if I can find them.

I read somewhere than the Great Eastern's wheelhouse ended up in the grounds of a school somewhere in Liverpool being used as a garden shed.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

This is quite fascinating stuff, I had no idea about this ship, despite having seen the name on pubs and hotels in the Wirral area all my life.

The flagpole from the GE is now at Liverpool FC's ground, Anfield.

I have read one reference to "a few pieces being seen on the Wirral", but can't find if this refers to such artefacts as the flagpole, or if there are any remains at New Ferry or Rock Ferry that could be photographed. If anyone can find a more specific reference, I'd love to go and see if I can find them.

I read somewhere than the Great Eastern's wheelhouse ended up in the grounds of a school somewhere in Liverpool being used as a garden shed.

That sounds about right, those scousers will pinch anything.