The Great Eastern
Her colossal size almost eclipsed her astonishing reputation.
She was the largest iron steamship built in the nineteenth century. Designed to carry 4,000 passengers, her capacity was twice that of vessels built 70 years later.
She had two sets of engines, five smokestacks, ten boilers and six masts, built to handle the 6,500 yards of sail. The list of the ship’s features went on and on; the largest grand saloon afloat; the first true double hull for safety in case she struck something; gas lighting; bathtubs with hot and cold running seawater in many of the staterooms and a pair of satellite steamers lashed to her sides, to shuttle passengers back and forth when she was in port.
Walt Whitman wrote of her sailing up Lower New York Bay:
“Nor I forgot to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay, Well shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was 600 feet long, (sic)
Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forgot not to sing.”
She carried enough coal to send her to India and back. Fully loaded, she displaced 27,000 tons. Most vessels of her time displaced only one tenth that weight. But she was jinxed even before she was launched. At least six workers died during her construction; she killed and injured several more during the five months it took just to launch her into the Thames River.
She even managed the death of her builder, the famous British engineer Isambard K. Brunel, who died in sorrow after hearing that one of her funnels blew up during her maiden voyage. The same explosion also killed a number of her firemen.
Her first master also died, not by her hand directly, but by a sudden squall that capsized his gig as he was going ashore.
She bankrupt three separate sets of owners and consumed millions of British pounds before she carried her first paying passenger.
It would be hard to believe how such a blatant symbol of bad luck could become the focus of the salvation of an entire country. 1.
The tall thin man dressed in a black wool suit seemed out of place on the Annapolis waterfront. After all, this was a hot August day in 1860 and nearly everyone else was dressed for the heat and their dockside occupations. The man walked slowly into the ship chandler’s shop where ship’s carpenters and others bought the myriad of ropes, pulleys and stays needed to keep the enormously complicated sailing ship rigging in top operating shape.
“Anyone know when The Great Eastern is dropping anchor out in the Bay?” the stranger asked.
One of the store’s clerk suddenly appeared from behind a stack of barrels. “We heard sometime early this afternoon,” the clerk said, “but that’s really up to the whims of the wind and the Lord,” he added, invoking the name of the Almighty, as if He was in control of the gigantic iron steamship.
“Thanks.” The man turned and walked back out onto the dock. He took his bowler off his head and wiped the perspiration from his brow with his handkerchief. As he put his hat back on, he turned and looked down the bay. George Percy, one of Allan Pinkerton’s most effective spies, saw a huge cloud of black smoke spewing from an equally large ship’s black hull.
The ship could already be seen, even though she was several miles down the Chesapeake Bay. As she drew closer, her size became better defined from the frothy green water stirred up by her sidewheels and propeller. Likewise, the size of the bow wave created by her speed helped put her monstrous size in better perspective.
By now, people from all over town were rushing towards the harbor piers, anxious to get a closer look at the 680-foot British iron steamship. Everything about her overshadowed the port city. Her masts were nearly as tall as the just-finished, 121-foot Maryland Statehouse and could be seen from virtually any spot in the city. Her hull occupied so much space that it nearly blocked traffic from arriving or leaving the port.
But George Percy’s reason for watching the ship weigh anchor went far beyond casual curiosity. As a Union espionage agent, his boss had sent him down from Washington to learn as much as he could about the ship and where she was going. There were rumors that the South was exploring a long-term charter with the owners.
The Great Eastern had come to Maryland’s capital city to pay her respects to the United States and its President, James Buchanan. That was the stated purpose. But the ship’s owners were simply shopping the vessel’s role as a cargo ship, here to try and persuade the President to charter the vessel to carry cotton to England. And there was a subtle warning inherent in the request.
Already on board, the President was escorted to the ship’s grand saloon. Over an elegant lunch, Daniel Gooch, one of the ship’s directors, put the proposition directly in front of the President.
“Mr. President,” he began, “what would be the possibility of the United States chartering the Great Eastern to carry the south’s cotton crop to the mills in Great Britain? She could probably carry the entire crop in four or five voyages.” The Director leaned back in his chair, awaiting the President’s reaction.
The President “thought well of it,” according to a later entry in Gooch’s diary. But the shrewd ship company’s officer saved his coup d’ grace for last. Leaning forward and speaking in a low voice he added, “Don’t you think it would be a wise move to charter the ship to keep her out of the South’s hands in the event of war? If you decide to blockade the southern ports, what chance do your wooden naval vessels have against the 27,000 tons of iron that make up the ship’s hull?”
In spite of the seemingly dire consequences inherent in Gooch’s warning, Buchanan, true to his tradition, did nothing. The nation seemed destined for conflict; the President either unwilling or unable to do anything to prevent the South from seceding from the Union.
And George Percy, intent on the mission he was sent to do, watched the ship’s smaller satellite steamers start to make their way back to the Annapolis dock with the presidential party on board. He began to plot how he was going to get on board the ship while she was still in port.
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