“Deserved A Better Fate”: The Misadventures of the “Great Eastern"

Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern, by Robert Howlett

It would not be overly hyperbolic to describe Isambard Kingdom Brunel as the man who built the Victorian Era.  Brunel was not merely a brilliant engineer, he was a visionary.  His building projects such as massive dockyards, steamships, bridges, tunnels, and the Great Western Railway, were all tangible symbols of his age's optimism, drive, and fervent belief of humanity's limitless potential.

His magnum opus was the “Great Eastern,” one of the most remarkable engineering feats of the 19th century.  Sadly, his greatest achievement proved to be his biggest disaster.  "Great Eastern" is now often alluded to as a “cursed” ship.  While her history was certainly one of the most ill-starred in maritime history, this can largely be attributed to a combination of simple mismanagement, not the occult.  Brunel's creation was (if you will pardon the cliche) ahead of its time.

"Great Eastern" was designed to be not just a ship, but a thing of wonder, a floating palace that would travel the world in grand style.  It could hold up to 4,000 passengers.  The hull was 692 feet long.  Brunel designed a remarkable series of bulkheads that formed 16 watertight compartments, which he believed would make the ship virtually unsinkable.  The monster ship was held together by over three million inch-thick rivets--all of which were driven in by hand.  The ship weighed 22,500 tons, and looked it.  Brunel's "great babe," as he affectionately dubbed it, was six times bigger than any ship that had ever been seen before.  Its vast storage capability meant it was capable of sailing around the world without ever needing to stop to refuel.  (The vessel was originally christened "Leviathan," which would have been almost too appropriate.)

When the "Great Eastern" was finally completed, just launching it into the Thames was itself a herculean effort.  Ordinary chains and barges snapped and sank under the effort.  It took days just to move the ship a few inches.  Finally, on January 31, 1858, "Great Eastern" was afloat.  The effort of moving it the 330 feet down to the water had taken three months and cost an estimated £1,000 a foot.  

The total expenses that went into building the "Great Eastern" were over a million pounds.  The cost sent the company behind the ship into bankruptcy.  Undaunted, Brunel managed to raise more money under a new board of directors.

It was this new ownership that helped doom "Great Eastern."  Brunel had designed the ship for long ocean journeys to India and Australia.  Unfortunately, the new management decided they wanted a quicker return on their investment.  They abandoned these plans in favor of making shorter runs across the North Atlantic.  The day before the ship first set sail, Brunel himself came to give his masterpiece one last inspection.  It proved to be the last act of his illustrious career.  Just after posing for photographs in front of the ship, the 53-year-old engineer suddenly collapsed.  He had suffered a massive stroke which led to his death one week later.

Brunel breathed his last just as word came of the first great disaster to hit the "Great Eastern."  As the ship was making a trial run, through some unaccountable negligence, a steam valve had been left shut, causing an explosion.  Six men died in the accident, and the ship's luxurious grand salon was destroyed.  The planned maiden voyage to America had to be canceled.

While they waited for the ship to be repaired, its owners brought the "Great Eastern" to Holyhead, Wales, where they opened it to paying sightseers.  When the repairs were nearly finished, a massive gale wrenched the ship from its moorings and flung it out to sea.  Although Brunel's bulkheads kept the "Great Eastern" from sinking, by the time it was recovered, the newly-finished salon had been re-demolished.  Weeks later, the ship's captain, the coxswain, and the young son of the chief purser were drowned in a storm.

When news of this latest calamity reached London, the directors of the ship's managing company threw up their hands and resigned.  Word was spreading that Brunel's magnificent vessel was a massive iron-hulled hoodoo.

"Great Eastern's" maiden voyage had been scheduled for June 9, 1860, but various difficulties forced a week's delay.  Three hundred people had bought tickets for the 12-day journey, but most got tired of waiting and booked passage on a Cunard liner instead.  By the time "Great Eastern" finally set sail for New York on June 16, there were only 35 passengers.  They must have felt very small and lonely in the enormous surroundings.  Adding to the increasing aura of failure and unease was the fact that this would be the very first time the ship's new captain had ever crossed the Atlantic.

As a money-saving measure, the cheapest coal had been used to power the ship.  This proved to be yet another mistake.  It damaged the funnel casings, which made the dining room so hot as to be unusable.  Aside from that, the voyage was uneventful (a word one seldom gets to use when discussing the "Great Eastern,") and the ship arrived in New York to something of a hero's welcome.  So great was the interest in the amazing vessel that the owners charged the curious $1 a head to tour the ship.  (This high price so offended Gothamites that they chose to increase the return on their money by vandalizing the ship for souvenirs.)

While awaiting the return to England, a short two-day pleasure trip was planned.  The excursion attracted two thousand passengers, all of whom would very soon regret their decision.  It was only after they set sail that the paying guests learned there were only 300 beds available.  A burst pipe flooded the food supply, leaving nothing to eat but dried chicken, salt beef and biscuits that could have passed for the iron rivets holding the ship together.  And soon, even that wretched fare was gone.  When the passengers went on deck, the five funnels rained soot on them.  And there was no water available for them to clean up.  The first night out, a navigation error left the ship 100 miles off-course.  By the time the nightmare cruise finally ended, there were two thousand more people firmly convinced that the "Great Eastern" was a floating curse.  

New York had had enough of the ship.  When the "Great Eastern" left for Milford Haven with 90 passengers, it virtually slunk out in disgrace.  During the voyage, a screw shaft broke.  As the "Great Eastern" approached the harbor, it fouled the hawser of a small nearby boat, drowning two of its passengers.  As a sort of encore, it then rammed into a frigate.

After all this, the captain, not surprisingly, never wished to set eyes on the "Great Eastern" again.  The third captain had what were probably prudent second thoughts and quit before he had even set foot on the ship.  

The next voyage of the "Great Eastern" carried only 100 passengers.  Hundreds of would-be emigrants were willing to travel on it in steerage, but the board of directors, with remarkable short-sightedness, refused to invest the money to add third-class accommodation to the ship.  They wanted the "Great Eastern" to be solely a luxury cruise ship for rich passengers, ignoring the fact that the enormous vessel would have been uniquely well-suited for transporting large amounts of emigrants.  Instead, they dismissed what would surely have been an immensely lucrative enterprise in favor of trying to lure in the wealthy--most of whom had more alluring travel options than the slow, notoriously unlucky "Great Eastern."  The ship was too cold to cross the ocean during the winter, which only decreased its profitability.  Adding to the its problems was that there were no docks or harbors anywhere in the world fully capable of handling such an overwhelming vessel.

In September 1861 the "Great Eastern" was hit by a hurricane which caused £60,000 worth of damages.  The next year, it hit an uncharted rock that ripped its outer hull.  This latest escapade cost £70,000 to repair.

By 1864, the owners gave up on ever turning the "Great Eastern" into a luxury liner and sold it for £25,000.  It was to be used to lay cable across the ocean floors.  Typically, its first effort in this new role ended in disaster, when an accident caused the cable to slip and sink to the ocean floor.  The cable was never recovered.  However, the "Great Eastern" went on to have a successful run as a cable layer until 1874, when the debut of ships specially designed for cable made the "Great Eastern" obsolete.

The owners just did not know what to do with the ship after that.  They simply dumped it in the harbor at Milford Haven and left it to the rust and the barnacles.  By this point, the ghost of Isambard Brunel was undoubtedly weeping.

In 1886, the "Great Eastern" was sold for £20,000.  The new management towed it to Liverpool (it crashed into a tug along the way.)  It was used as a giant advertising banner.  The ship was plastered with slogans touting local stores and brands of tea. It was as if an aging, once-magnificent movie icon had been reduced to doing late-night infomercials.

The "Great Eastern" was finally sold to metal dealers in 1889.  The ship was so well-built it took 200 men two years to tear it apart.  Brunel's ambitious dream ended her days as a great heap of anonymous scrap parts. 

The final victim of the legendary "Curse of the Great Eastern" turned out to be the ship itself.  Sir Daniel Gooch, one of the engineers who sailed with the ship during its cable-laying days, wrote sadly, "Poor old ship; you deserved a better fate."

Let that be the "Great Eastern's" epitaph.

[Note:  Five people were killed while the "Great Eastern" was being built--not an overly high death rate for such a project--but the real source of the alleged "jinx" on the ship is believed to stem from another tragedy.  During the "Great Eastern's" construction, it is said that a riveter and his apprentice disappeared.  According to this legend, their fate remained a mystery until the ship was dismantled.  Inside the double hull, two skeletons were discovered.  They had accidentally been riveted inside the ship, with the noise of construction drowning out their desperate cries for help.  Popular belief has it that this dreadful incident, which in effect turned the "Great Eastern" into a floating graveyard, was responsible for the long run of bad luck that plagued the ship.

Accounts differ on whether or not this macabre tale is fact or imaginative fiction.  In either case, as I said at the beginning of this post, the true curse of the "Great Eastern" was human stupidity rather than spectral revenge.]

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

The death of a notorious “cursed ship” was reported in the “Miami News,” October 9, 1929:

A mystery fire, believed set by a superstitious seaman, Wednesday morning was destroying the rotting wreck of the schooner Nancy Hanks, ghost ship of Miami harbor, whose name has been cursed by mariners from Cape Cod to Zanzibar. 

Shortly before midnight Tuesday, when the Miami Beach waterfront was silent except for the soughing of waves and the rippling of the tide, flames suddenly burst out aboard the haunted schooner, which has laid on the end of Fisher's island since 1926. 

Seamen on the SS Magnolia, docked at the Texas Co. wharf, said the fire appeared to break out in the bow and leaped the entire length of the hulk, indicating the wreck had been saturated with oil and the blaze set deliberately. 

Fingers of flame etched the death tale of the Nancy Hanks to a distance of 75 feet in the sky, lighting up the harbor. The fire was visible for miles and burned all night. 

At 9 a. m. Wednesday the sides of the vessel fell in and the stern, which overhung into the water, crashed hissing into the bay. At noon the flames still were eating along the keel and hull timbers that remained.

Miami Beach fire department made a run to a point on the county causeway opposite the bulk and kept watch lest a blazing section of the craft drifting in the water, come ashore and spread the fire to wharf and warehouse properties. 

The Nancy Hanks was a three-masted schooner of 1,100 gross tons. She was 204 feet in length, 41 feet in breadth and drew 19 feet of water. Normally she carried a crew of 10. The name of the shipyard that gave her birth could not be learned, but she was rebuilt in 1917 at Thomaston, Maine. New York was the schooner's home port. 

The "wreck." beached almost at the entrance of the harbor, long has been an eyesore and officials for some time have considered removing it, but the fear of wraiths on the part of a deep water man apparently has accomplished that task. 

Feared by sailor-men as an unholy schooner on which the devil held high fiesta, the Nancy Hanks long has been an enigma of the sea. The ghost of John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln, was said to have haunted the craft, which was named for the mother of the Emancipator.

One old sea dog on the waterfront, his eyes probably distorted by superstition and the smoke banks, said he saw a ghastly figure, anguished and fearful, dancing up and down on the tongues of flame that licked skyward during the fire. He swore it was the ghost being driven from its abiding place by the "purifying" flames. 

Often the schooner is reputed to have put to sea with a good cargo and fair voyage in prospect, only to creep into port, torn by storms and the crew in mutiny. Tales that seamen on watch were whisked off the decks by a supernatural agency, that a monstrous black cat, with the eyes of a Satan, appeared from nowhere and perched on the poop as harbinger of disaster, have gone the rounds wherever seafaring men gather. Often the ghost has been reported laid, only to spring up, sphinx-like, from the debacle of its demise. 

Mariners believed the Nancy Hanks was a doomed ship and during the latter days of its career it was almost impossible to ship a crew. One seaman, Capt. C. B. Foster, was said to have beaten the ghost in 10-month battle at sea and returned to port with a $250,000 profit for the owner. He was well known in Miami. 

Captain Foster took the Nancy Hanks from New York to Durban, British East Africa, with a general cargo, and the voyage proved a ghastly Odyssey. When out only a few days, a mysterious leak was sprung and a squall "broke down." 

The crew, terrified, pleaded to put back, but Captain Foster "cracked on." While in the midst of their terror, the devil cat that has been associated with the ship suddenly appeared. 

The skipper found the leak was caused by wedges slipping out of the ports and repairs were made. Fair weather followed the squall and the black cat disappeared. The sailors' spirits rose until suddenly, when they were nearing latitude 40, the cat appeared again, trailed by four coal black kittens. The men reverted to hysteria, the sky darkened and a hurricane "broke down." The ship survived, the skipper said, only by a miracle. After many days, in which misfortunes followed one another in rapid succession, the schooner reached Durban. 

When the seamen looked for the black cat, it had disappeared. The cargo was discharged and a lading of coal taken aboard for West African ports. The Nancy Hanks barely was at sea before the cat appeared and another gale blew up. It was weathered with difficulty and port reached. Upon docking, the cat disappeared again. 

A cargo of mahogany was loaded for Boston and the schooner put to sea once more. The infernal cat appeared again and African fever swept the ship. With only himself and two weakened seamen able to work the schooner. Captain Foster struggled toward America. A sudden squall swept away canvas which the weakened mariners could not reach and it was said the cat was swept overboard. Fair weather followed and the schooner finally reached Boston, clearing about a quarter of a million for her owners on the voyage. 

Captain Foster left the schooner and it carried coastwise cargoes, with varying misfortunes, for several years. One day it appeared off Miami in distress, carrying a cargo of lumber. Aid was given, and the Nancy Hanks towed into the harbor. The crew, muttering mutiny, deserted and it was learned a sailor had killed one of the officers and the captain had been washed overboard at sea during the voyage. 

The cargo of lumber was unloaded and the Nancy Hanks anchored in the harbor, awaiting further orders.

Her name had become a curse in the mouth of every mariner and it was impossible to ship a crew, for sailor-men believe in ghost ships and are firm in the opinion that to ship on one is to seal one's doom. 

Even in harbor, the malignant fate that was the destiny of the staunch schooner did not cease to torture it. The craft strained at anchor and had a disconcerting way of swinging into the path of any boat nearing it. Then, in a storm, it broke away and grounded on Fisher's island. There was no attempt to salvage it. The wreckers dismantled it and left the battered skeleton to rot. Sailor men shook their heads and muttered that at last the devil ship's career was ended and its ghost would walk no more. 

But it seemed that fate only had leered in a twisted smile when it apparently had allowed the boat to end its days on a peaceful bar. 

Some mariner, probably tortured by the sight of the hulk that may have meant misfortune to himself or comrades, apparently could not rest at the sight of the abandoned schooner. Perhaps he thought the ghost would roam again and do more harm unless driven to oblivion by flames. 

So under cover of darkness, with a curse in his throat, perhaps he rowed to the island in a skiff, poured oil on the hull and touched a match--then fled chuckling while the remains of the good shin Nancy Hanks were devoured by flames. Only a few charred timbers remain: the next few tides, a puff of wind, a little sand piled up--and the last remnant of the Nancy Hanks will be removed from the sight of man.