The SS Great Britain, Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s second steamship, set out at 11:00 am on 22 September 1846 on its fifth voyage from Liverpool to New York with 180 passengers on board. Mistaking the St John’s Point lighthouse for the Chicken Rock lighthouse on the Isle of Man, the ship rounded the headland and was grounded close to Tyrella Coast Guard watch house in Dundrum Bay, Co Down, north east Ireland.
In 1845, the SS Great Britain was the first iron-hulled steamer to cross the Atlantic, which she did in just 14 days, she made her voyage seven years after the SS Sirus paddle steamer captained by Corkman Richard Roberts became the first powered vessel to make the transatlantic crossing.
SS Great Britain was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859) and held the record as the world’s largest passenger ship afloat from 1845 to 1854. With a construction cost of £117,295, she was commissioned by the Great Western Steamship Company for the transatlantic service between Bristol and New York City. SS Great Britain was pioneering in incorporating both iron construction and a screw propeller, making her the first large ocean-going ship to feature this combination.
Great Britain measures 322 ft (98 m) in length and possesses a displacement of 3,400 tons. Its power source consisted of two inclined two-cylinder engines, featuring twin high-pressure cylinders and twin low-pressure cylinders with a bore of 88 inches (220 cm) and a stroke length of 6 feet (1.8 m). Additionally, the ship was equipped with secondary masts to utilise sail power. Across its four decks, the vessel offered ample accommodations, including cabins, dining areas, and promenade saloons, capable of housing 120 crew members and accommodating 360 – 750 passengers.
The incident, which was the result of a gross navigational error, left Brunel’s second great ship after the Great Western (1837), high and dry on the sands at Dundrum Bay.
Although the passengers were considerably alarmed it was decided to keep them aboard until daylight and there was a sleepless night for all while the great ship bumped heavily, damaging her rudder and propeller blades. At dawn she was found to be resting on a sandy beach, having narrowly missed the dangerous reefs known as the Cow and Calf rocks. There were no casualties and every horse and cart in the neighbourhood was requisitioned to carry the passengers and their luggage to safety across the sand banks to the nearest towns.
The ship’s considerable deviation from its intended course demonstrates the limited understanding at the time regarding the impact of iron hulls on the accuracy of the magnetic compass. It has also been suggested that inaccurate admiralty charts where partly to blame for the grounding of the vessel.
No accurate position was recorded at the time and the exact location of the grounding was unknown until January 2015 when a team from the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol availed of the low September tides and used magnetometry to survey large sections of Tyrella Beach, close to Newcastle, Co. Down. As no traces or artefactual material remain on the surface today, the archaeologists used fluxgate gradiometers, which are able to map small variations in the earth’s magnetic field, at some depth, which can be caused by buried material, especially iron.
For the first time it was possible to accurately pinpoint not only the location at which SS Great Britain was grounded but also the breakwater that Brunel had constructed to protect his ship from the winter storms of 1846 – ’47.
Even Brunel’s breakwater constructed only from materials to hand was a design masterpiece. Built by Brunel employee, Captain Claxton who lived for a year on the shoreline of Dundrum Bay overseeing the salvage of the ship.
From a detailed account in “The Steamship Great Britain – Grahame Farr (1965)” the salvage crew made up of skilled locals worked at low tide close to the stern quarter, which was exposed to the full force of the sea. They drove birch trees seven feet deep into the sand, down to the rocks, in a double row about sixty feet long. Next, more than five thousand bundles of brushwood were stacked against the trunks and held in place by piled stones, chains, and pieces of iron from the ship. Outside, to break the initial force of the waves, they built a flexible bulwark of interwoven saplings.
Following the unsuccessful attempts and declarations by several prominent salvage experts that the salvage of the SS Great Britain was either impossible or beyond their capabilities, Brunel sought the assistance of Alexander Bremner, a skilled salvage expert from Scotland. At that time Bremner had gained recognition for successfully salvaging 236 distressed vessels using his unique methods.
Referencing again from “The Steamship Great Britain” the tremendous task of re-floating began in the spring of 1847 with measures to lift the ship by levers and counter weights from the sand pit in which she had become embedded.
The salvage crew built twenty large wooden boxes each containing thirty or more tons of sand and suspended them on tackles from her side decks. When they were lowered to the ground lifting could commence, and while the tide surrounded her they were hoisted back into place to prevent undue movement of the ship.
Amidships, long stout timbers were driven under her bilges, and piles of stones were built up to act as a fulcrum. At the outer extremities of the timbers every possible weighty item was piled, rocks, her anchors, pieces of machinery and much else. On the inshore side they used one of her large iron lifeboats filled with sand. At her bows a similar lever was rigged. As each tide loosened the surrounding ground, the sand boxes were lowered and the 3,066 tonne ship was allowed to lift by the action of the levers.
Many tons of stones were directed by chutes into the hole left beneath her and as each tide fell she rested again a little higher. Eventually immense wedges could be driven under her and by 29 July 1847 she was raised high enough for a team of boilermakers from Portsmouth naval yard, to patch the six holes in her bottom. On the spring tides of August 1847 the sand boxes were emptied and used for their alternative purpose as lifting camels. By these means they were able to move the Great Britain a short distance on to a level ridge of rocks.
According to Joanna Thomas, curator at the SS Great Britain “The Dundrum Bay incident represented the birth of modern ship salvage methods,” “…because they were able to rescue her in 1847, the ship survives today.”
After the Great Britain was re-floated and towed back to Liverpool, a survey by Fawcett, Preston and Company of Liverpool estimated that the cost of putting the Great Britain in order again would be £15,886 for the hull, rigging, etc., and £5,808 for the machinery a total of nearly £22,000 equivalent to approximately £1.85 million in today’s money. This sum ultimately lead to the financial ruin of the vessel’s owners, the Great Western Steamship Company.
It is a testament to the strength of Brunel’s iron-hull design that this 322 ft (98 m) long, 3,066 tonne ship was to be salvaged from the sea twice in her service-career, but more of that later.
In 1852, the ship was sold for salvage and underwent repairs and served diligently for numerous years, operating between Britain and Australia. In 1881, it underwent another transformation, being converted to an all-sail vessel. In 1886 she was badly damaged rounding Cape Horn and limped into Port Stanley on the Falkland Islands. As repairs were too expensive she was retired as a sailing vessel and repurposed as a warehouse, quarantine ship and later a coal hulk. The ship remained in service an impressive 98 years and 47 voyages after its initial 1839 construction Finally she was beached in Sparrow Cove, northeast of Port Stanley on April 12th 1937.
In 1970, the hull was re-floated from Sparrow Bay Beach in the Falkland Islands and interestingly Bremner’s 1847 salvage method was once again employed. The SS Great Britain was loaded aboard a barge and towed 8,000 miles back from the Falklands and returned to the Bristol dry dock where she had been built in 1839 and where she remains on permanent display today.
Information sources:
Belfast Entries
Creative Commons
David P Howard
irisharchaeology.ie
James Wooley
Northern Ireland Heritage and Environment Agency
Oceanwide Expeditions
SS Great Britain – Dr Helen Doe
The Illustrated London News
The Steamship Great Britain – Grahame Farr (1965)
University of Bristol
William Talbot
