One Crew: The RNLI's Official 200-Year History

One Crew: The RNLI's Official 200-Year History

SS Great Britain

Brunel's Ship, Her Voyages, Passengers and Crew

  • Author(s):
  • Helen Doe
  • Foreword by Dr Matthew Tanner MBE, Chief Executive of the SS Great Britain Trust

Publication Date15th August 2022

Book FormatPaperback

pages288

Illustrations30

Height198

Width124

New paperback edition - The story of Brunel's most famous ship and the people who knew her, using new archive sources.
Regular Price £12.99 Online Price: £11.69
Availability: In stock
ISBN
9781398116924

In SS Great Britain, Helen Doe provides a narrative account of this famous and historically important ship. Experimental and controversial, Great Britain led the way for iron shipbuilding and screw propulsion. The book charts the ship’s brilliant design and construction, and the tribulations of her owners as they battled financial crises to turn Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s vision into reality. Brunel was passionate about this ship and was devastated when a navigational error stranded her in Dundrum Bay, Ireland. She was rescued in a great feat of salvage and went on to a long life at sea, carrying passengers to New York, troops to the Crimea and India, and thousands of emigrants to Australia.


Helen Doe highlights the contribution of the many individuals connected to the ship, ranging from crew members to passengers, at least one grand Victorian scandal, and the mysterious disappearance of her long-serving captain. In this way, the ship’s life and times are recreated and the history of a technical marvel is given a human face.


The ship was salvaged a second time, when she was rescued from the Falkland Islands and towed home across the Atlantic. She now sits in splendour in her original dock in Bristol and is one of the most visited attractions in Britain. This a compelling account of an iconic ship and of an important moment in industrial history.

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