Brunel's Three Ships

INTRODUCTION

DURING the time of the Industrial Revolution many great scientists and inventors gained fame, and their names have passed into history and become household words. Men like James Watt, the Stephensons and Faraday— their inventions and discoveries were the life blood of the engineers of the day. Every new technical innovation was seized upon and developed with an enthusiasm which is sadly lacking in modern times.

One such man was Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and no other man diversified his activities or packed so much into a lifetime as this dynamic genius.

Brunel was born at exactly the right time. The Victorian era was probably the most progressive in our history, and every new idea, however far-fetched, could be sure of finding a backer, especially if its proposer was as persuasive and enthusiastic as the ‘Little Giant’. He could have found money for a steam-driven rocket to the moon, for in his time some of his ideas were no less fantastic.

As a railway engineer he was one of the best, taking the line from London to the West Country and at the same time designing the tunnels, bridges, cuttings and railway stations that went with it. Bristol became his favourite city, and he gave it its finest structure—the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Almost as a sideline he designed dockyards, experimented with gas engines and built an ‘atmospheric’ railway. And as if this wasn’t enough he built three ships.

It was in this sphere, more than any other, that Brunel excelled as an innovator. Each ship was revolutionary, and set the patterns for all subsequent vessels; a ship that could steam to New York, a ship built of iron and propelled by a screw, and to crown his achievements—the biggest ship the world had ever known.

In this book we trace the history of those ships, and follow the fortunes of Brunel and the men who had faith in him. We have tried to recapture the enthusiasm of those exciting times, when Britain was the world’s laboratory. Almost every day, it seems, there was something new to cheer—or wonder at. For the gamblers there were fortunes to be won—or lost. For the workers it meant employment.

But the lowliest citizens who waved their flags at the dockside and the wealthy financiers who puffed nervously at their cigars had one thing in common. They had the time to stand and stare, to marvel at the ingenuity of their fellowmen, and to recognise the importance of that age. It was a common bond that has no parallel today.

Bernard Dumpleton

Muriel Miller

St. Albans. 1974

Prologue

ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL

ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL was born on April 9th, 1806, at Portsea, Hampshire. His father was a Frenchman, and it was in France that Marc Isambard Brunel met Sophia Kingdom, the daughter of a Plymouth naval contractor. She had been sent to France to learn the language in the household of Captain François Carpentier in Rouen. Also in that household was Brunel, sheltering from the revolutionary republican forces, for Marc was a strong Royalist and the French Revolution was at its height. In those violent and troubled surroundings their romance blossomed, but as the Reign of Terror spread, Brunel was forced to flee to America, and Sophia returned to England.

Marc Brunel spent six years in America, where his engineering skills developed until he became Chief Engineer for New York.

Throughout that time he corresponded with Sophia Kingdom, and it was his love for her, coupled with his desire to further his engineering ambitions in England, that led him to leave the country of his adoption. He landed in Falmouth in March 1799, and in November of that year he and Sophia were married in London. They went to live at Portsea where two daughters were born to them before they were delivered of their first, and only, son.

Young Isambard began to show, at a very early age, that he had inherited his father’s talents. By the time that he was six he had mastered Euclid, and his father gave every encouragement to his drawing ability. He sent the lad to a private school in Hove, where Isambard demonstrated another of his father’s unique gifts. On several occasions Marc Brunel had shown extraordinary powers of observation in detecting faulty designs or workmanship in architectural structures. Once he predicted that a suspension bridge over the Seine would collapse, and it did.

Isambard amazed his schoolmates by predicting that a new building in Hove would fall, and a few days later the building was in ruins.

At the age of fourteen, Brunel was sent to study at the College of Caen in Normandy, and later to the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris. His education was completed when he served an apprenticeship under the great Louis Breguet, the master craftsman in the field of chronometers and scientific instruments. No finer tutor could have been found to bring out the natural engineering talents of the young Brunel, and when he returned to England at the age of sixteen he immediately went into his father’s office in London. He also worked in the engineering firm of Maudslay, Sons and Field, thus continuing an association started by his father which was to last throughout his lifetime.

Isambard Brunel was more than just an assistant to his father. In addition to his skills he had inherited his father’s forceful personality, and more and more he began to influence his father’s projects.

Marc Brunel was, of course, delighted with his son’s progress and when, in 1824, he embarked upon his greatest project, Isambard was to play a major role.

A tunnel under the Thames had been advocated as early as 1798, by Ralph Dodd, the engineer of the Grand Surrey Canal. No work was done, but the idea was revised in 1802 by Richard Vazie. Vazie’s tunnel was planned to stretch 1,200ft from Rotherhithe to Limehouse, and in

1805 a company was formed to back the scheme. Several eminent engineers, including John Rennie and Richard Trevithick, acted as consultants, and it was Trevithick who came nearest to success. Using skilled Cornish miners he drove a heading to within 200ft of the total length before the tunnel collapsed, fortunately without loss of life. The project was abandoned, but Marc Brunel had followed its progress with interest. While working in Chatham Dockyard he had observed the tunnelling action of worms in ships’ timbers, and from this he evolved the idea of a tunnelling shield which he patented in 1818.

In 1823, Marc Brunel was persuaded to discuss his idea with a group of influential businessmen. As a result of that meeting, the Thames Tunnel Company was formed, and Marc was appointed engineer at a salary of £1,000 a year. The tunnelling shield was built by Maudslay, Sons and Field. It consisted of 12 cast-iron frames, each 21ft 4in high and 3ft wide. Three working levels, on each of which one man could excavate, were set one above the other. The working face was covered by a series of heavy oak planks, which were held against the face by jacks. The system of excavation was that each plank was removed in turn and the area exposed was dug out to a depth of 4 inches. The planks were then replaced and the frame was moved forward 4 inches, the process was then repeated. Behind the excavators came the bricklayers who lined the tunnel as the shield moved laboriously forward.

After the shafts had been sunk the shield was installed, and the actual tunnelling operation began on November 28th, 1825.

Despite the excellence of Brunel’s design it soon became apparent that the task would be more difficult than had been anticipated. Geological reports had assured Brunel that he would be working in a firm bed of clay, but these reports proved to be false and flooding became a constant hazard. Sickness too was a very real danger, as the foul waters of the Thames poured into the tunnel bringing all manner of diseases, including one which produced total and permanent blindness.

The resident engineer for the project was William Armstrong and he was assisted by Isambard Brunel But before the work of excavating had begun Marc Brunel became seriously ill, and a few months later Armstrong resigned. Consequently Isambard, while still only twenty years of age, came to be in sole charge of one of the greatest engineering ventures of the century.

The young Brunel devoted himself to the task, often working for 36 hours at a time. To ease the burden he was provided with three assistants, but one died of fever shortly after his appointment, and another was struck blind in one eye. Isambard was also taken ill in 1826, but was soon back at work.

By May 1827, 300ft of tunnel had been excavated. The Brunels, however, were not happy about the safety of the project. The prediction of a clay bed had been completely unfounded, and as the roof of the tunnel was only 14ft below the bed of the river there was good cause for their apprehension. The constant flow of visitors to the face workings, many of them people of great eminence, also gave rise to anxiety.

The intuition that both men shared became a reality on the night of May 18th. The river was at high water when Isambard’s assistant, Beamish, went into the tunnel to take over from Brunel. Preparations were being made to move two of the frames forward, and water was already entering at an alarming rate. Suddenly, the rush became a torrent.

Above the thunderous roar Brunel, who was still in the tunnel, could be heard ordering the men to get out. Beamish met him at the bottom of the shaft, and the two men scrambled to safety just ahead of the oncoming wave. When they reached the surface a roll-call was taken, and miraculously, not a man was missing.

The next day Isambard borrowed a diving bell and inspected the river at the point where the breach had occurred. As he had suspected, the bed was gravel, and dredging had caused a large depression, thereby reducing the thickness between the river-bed and the tunnel roof. Bags of clay were used to plug the hole, and the task of pumping out the flooded tunnel began. The work took six months, and when the flood water and debris had been completely cleared, Brunel celebrated the achievement by holding a banquet in the tunnel.

But the conditions that had caused the calamity still existed. As the shield moved forward there was a constant fear of another break-through, and in January 1827 it came.

This time six men died in the flood that roared through the tunnel like a tidal wave. Isambard narrowly escaped death when he was pinned under a baulk of timber, and he had great difficulty in struggling free. The surge of water swept upwards to the top of the shaft, and it was obvious that the damage was far more serious than on the previous occasion. Once again the breach was plugged with bags of clay, but after supervising this operation Brunel was forced to retire to his bed. It was to be seven years before he returned to the project that had become as much an obsession with him as it was with his father.

His illness lasted many months, and during that time prolonged bickering persisted among the directors of the Tunnel Company, leading eventually to the suspension of the project. This decision marked the beginning of a period in Brunel’s life in which frustrations and disappointments were commonplace.

Ironically, his first disappointment later became a triumph which he did not live to see, and it occurred in the city that had given him the opportunities to establish himself as the greatest engineer of his day.

Bristol was chosen by Marc Brunel as a suitable place for his son to convalesce, and Isambard quickly fell in love with the grandeur and beauty of the Avon Gorge. Typically, he also saw it as a challenge, for no bridge spanned the chasm at that time. It may have been an act of providence that caused Brunel to visit Bristol at the time when the City Fathers were considering the construction of a suspension bridge over the Gorge. Designs were invited by the committee set up to organise a competition, and the entries were to be judged by Thomas Telford, the famous bridgebuilder.

Brunel submitted four designs but, much to his disgust, they were all rejected as were also the designs of his rivals.

The committee then asked Telford to submit a design of his own, but although his proposal was placed before Parliament the Bridge Committee had second thoughts, and in 1830 they held another competition. Brunel entered one of his previous designs and, although it was only slightly modified, this time he was successful. But his triumph was shortlived. The economic situation at the time prevented the project from going ahead and it was shelved until 1836 when work commenced on the abutments, then in 1854, the funds ran out and construction ceased. Finally, in 1864, the Institute of Civil Engineers banded together to complete the bridge as a tribute to their friend and colleague who had not lived to see his masterpiece erected.

After the disappointment of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Brunel turned to a new form of experiment. His father had done some initial work on the development of a gas engine and Isambard saw it as a possible alternative to the steam engine.

In theory the principle was good. Gas was generated by mixing carbonate of ammonia with sulphuric acid and passing it through two surface condensers which were alternately heated and cooled. The difference in pressure between the two condensers provided the power that Brunel hoped to harness, but after many months of experiment he came to the conclusion that the device was uneconomical.

Visionary though he was, Brunel was not of independent means, and in order to stay solvent he was forced to take any kind of engineering work that he could find. A commission to build a new dock at Monkswearmouth, Sunderland, ended in another disappointment when his first design was turned down, and similar plans for a Navy Dockyard at Woolwich also came to nothing.

It was now nearly five years since the closure of the Thames Tunnel. A period during which Brunel plumbed the depths of despair.

But he never gave up, and in 1832, he undertook a commission which, although in itself was quite ordinary, became a turning point in his career.

During his stay in Bristol he had become a close friend of Nicholas Roch, who was a member of the Dock Committee,