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XXV - (1859-63.) ON BOARD THE GREAT EASTERN DURING THE EXPLOSION—THE DROWNING OF INGRAM IN LAKE MICHIGAN—A BIRD OF ILL-OMEN ON BOSTON STUMP—“WELCOME ALEXANDRA!”—THE PRINCE OF WALES'S WEDDING AT WINDSOR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2010

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Summary

The “Illustrated Times” published a large number of engravings of the Great Eastern steamship, depicting the construction of the huge vessel step by step, and also the various efforts made to launch it, after its movements towards the water had met with a most unexpected check. From this circumstance I was one of the half-dozen newspaper men who received invitations to join the party assembled on board the ship when she started on what proved to be her disastrous trial trip in the summer of 1859. The trip was originally intended to have lasted a week or longer, but was cut short, it will be remembered, by an unfortunate explosion which sent one of the ship's funnels, weighing over eight tons, flying into the air, while the scalding steam half-flayed eight or ten poor stokers, who were keeping the furnace fires going at the time.

The construction of the great ship, which it was boasted would carry some four or five thousand emigrants to Australia in a single voyage, and return home laden with colonial produce, had been watched with the keenest interest, for perfect faith was placed in Brunel's predictions in regard to the grand future in store for this so-called leviathan of the deep. The hitch at her launching caused much concern, and when one fruitless effort after another to move the unwieldy mass was being made, people were as solicitous with regard to the result as though national, and not merely individual interests were at stake.

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Glances Back Through Seventy Years
Autobiographical and Other Reminiscences
, pp. 61 - 77
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010
First published in: 1893

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