Brunel's ""Great Western""

The Great Western, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, was designed in 1835 when Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Guppy created the Great Western Steam Ship Company in Britain; the vessel's maiden voyage from Bristol to New York took place in the spring of 1838. Griffiths, a British maritime historian, describes here the workings of the ship, its machinery and structure, and includes statisticscrew lists, maintainence expensesand descriptions of the Great Western's subsequent transatlantic crossings as a passenger and cargo ship, then as a mailship. His prose is dry and will spark interest only in those fiercely devoted to obscure maritime material. Illustrations. November2