The SS Great Britain

On Thursday, July 17th, we visited the SS Great Britian in Bristol. The SS Great Britain is widely considered to be the first modern ship, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel with an iron hull and a steam engine-powered propeller. At the museum next to the Great Britain, one of the displays in particular was fascinating to me, because it related to a question that I posed in class about the relationship between the military and engineering in the Victorian era. I was interested in this relationship because today, most, if not all, technological and engineering innovation originates in the military, whereas most of the innovations of the Victorian time we have learned about have come from the private sector. Professor Durant noted that Brunel did work closely with the navy on the development of the ship, but the fact that the ship considered to be the first real modern ship was developed in the private sector rather than the navy is still intriguing to me. The display at the museum described how during the Crimean War, the government was short of vessels to transport troops and supplies, and it began chartering passenger vessels. In 1854, the SS Great Britain was enlisted, and carried 44,000 British, French, and Turkish troops over the course of its service in the Crimean War.