LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Great Britain
built 655 days ago
While the Great Western had a wooden hull, the hull of Brunel's next ship, the Great Britain, was made of iron. Three years after its 1843 launching, its hull survived a grounding on the Irish coast. However, Brunel was notyet satisfied. He designed his next ship, the Great Eastern, to extendsteam service to Australia and carry a year's exports to India. The effort,though, ruined Brunel's finances, reputation, health, due in large part to the questionable business dealings of his partner in the venture, John Scott Russell.
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Brunel did not live to see the Great Eastern’s demise. Early on in her construction, he became seriously ill and on 5 September 1859 collapsed on the deck of a heart attack. Brunel was too ill to join the great ship on its maiden voyage steaming down the Thames two days later and died on 15 September. Few engineers have matched Brunel’s achievements in the scale and range of his output – from the largest steamship of the age in the SS Great Eastern, to its most ingenious railway bridge in the Royal Albert. His funeral at Kensal Green Cemetry was attended not only by eminent engineers, but several thousand railway workers paying their respects.
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Building on these successes, Brunel turned to a third ship in 1852, even larger than both of its predecessors. The Great Eastern was cutting edge technology for its time -- it was the largest ship ever built until the Lusitania launched in 1906 -- and it soon ran over budget and over schedule in the face of a series of difficult technical problems. The ship is widely perceived as a white elephant; indeed, there are considerable parallels with Howard Hughes' 20th century Spruce Goose. Though a failure at its original purpose of passenger travel, it eventually found a role as a oceanic telegraph cable-layer.
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The Great Western line to Bristol was part of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's grand vision - a link between London and New York - and he ... built the ships for the sea link. The first trans-Atlantic steam service was provided by the Great Western, at 236-feet long the biggest liner afloat by some margin when she made her maiden crossing in 1838.
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Brunel was included in the top 10 of the 100 Greatest Britons poll conducted by the BBC and voted for by the public. Each of the finalists in the poll was featured in an hour-long documentary. An admiring Jeremy Clarkson wrote and presented the programme about Brunel. In the second round of voting, which concluded on November 24 2002 , Brunel placed second behind Winston Churchill . There are many monuments and memorials commemorating his achievements in the GWR area, including a statue at Paddington station , and a collection of streets around St David's station in Exeter , giving access to student residences of the University of Exeter , that bear his names — Isambard Terrace, Kingdom Mews, and Brunel Close. A road and school in his home town of Portsmouth are named in his honour, as is Brunel University in West London.
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Brunel constructed nearly 1,200 miles of rail, including tracks in Ireland, Italy and Bengal. Alongside Thomas Telford, the Stephensons, Daniel Gooch and others, he created and inspired the innovative land and sea transport networks that carried the Industrial Revolution, not only around Britain but ... around the world. He opened up global travel and communications. Jeremy Clarkson, TV presenter and champion of Brunel in the 2002 BBC poll of great Britons, remarked, "Darwin told us where we came from, but it was Brunel who took us where we wanted to go."
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