‘So many histories of people are attached to those ships’

The team behind Bristol landmark the SS Great Britain are bringing another of Brunel’s ships back to life.

In a £20m scheme, a replica of the SS Great Western will be built and housed in the Albion Dockyard, behind where the SS Great Britain currently lies.

Joanna Mathers, head of collections for the SS Great Britain Trust, gave Bristol24/7 a lesson in maritime history as we looked back at the story of the SS Great Western and a fascinating history that deserves to be told.

Overshadowed today by the Great Britain, the Great Western was Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s first steamship built by the Great Western Steamship Company.

Launched in 1838 it was designed as a transatlantic liner for the super wealthy of the day, explained Joanna, and was decked out inside like a fancy hotel. “Everything was gilded that could be gilded,” she explained.

Pipped by a rival ship, the Sirius, the Great Western just missed out on being the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

It was, however, the first to make doing so commercially viable by carrying its exclusive clientele in luxury at previously unknown speeds of up to eight and a half knots.

The SS Great Western opened up a new world of possibility for communication – image: SS Great Britain Trust

Passenger travel was only half of the story though, explains Joanna, who has worked for the Trust for 12 years. The SS Great Western opened up a new world of possibility for communication.

When the SS Great Western was being built in the 1830s, journey times to the US were anything from six weeks to two months. The Great Western cut that down to two weeks.

“The increase in speed of communication is just absolutely mind-boggling,” said Joanna.

As well as cutting journey times, being powered by reliable steam, via two great paddle wheels either side, rather than variable wind meant that transatlantic crossings became regular and predictable.

The new steamships enabled people, letters and trade to travel to the US and back within a month. Travel, migration and business across the Atlantic became possible like never before.

More than a means of getting from A to B, the Great Western was a revolution in how people saw the globe, something Joanna calls “the shrinking of the world,” a trend continued into the modern day by air travel and instant communication.

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Just seven years after it was launched the Great Western became a victim of the very technological progress it had helped drive when Brunel built the Great Britain. Rear screw propellers replaced side paddle wheels and the Great Western became the Walkman of the shipping world.

It is a shame that the Great Western only lasted a few short years, said Joanna, but the ship is worth remembering “for the symbol of what she achieved and what she did in opening up the North Atlantic”.

The latter years of the Great Western saw the ship sold to pay for the recovery of the Great Britain after the latter ran aground. Brunel’s company went bankrupt shortly after and the Great Britain was sold, too.

Bought by the Royal Mail Packet Steamship Company, the Great Western journeyed to South America, embodying the new globalised era it had helped create.

The original bell from the SS Great Western is one of the few artefacts that remain from the bell – photo: James Ward.

Part of Joanna’s work today involves investigating the stories that emerge from this globetrotting. She is working with community groups in Bristol to uncover the hidden stories of people from the Caribbean who worked on British ships like the Great Western.

Shipping was and is a global work environment, said Joanna, adding: “crews on British ships were not British, they were international”.

“We see it in the Great Britain and that’s still very much a story we have to explore in detail for the Great Western. To be able to tell those stories is amazing.”

Shipping can even help us navigate contentious areas of history.

“What we might perceive as difficult topics like slavery and diversity, topics which are very current and which we are, thank God, discussing today, ships are brilliant vehicles to do that by, because they are by their very nature international, global and very, very diverse,” said Joanna.

During the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856, both the Great Western and the Great Britain were used as troop carriers – after which the Great Western was broken up and scrapped.

“A bit of a sad end,” said Joanna, adding that the ship “did have a long and successful career at sea.”

There are still lessons that the history of shipping can teach us today.

“What’s fascinating and what makes ships relatable to people nowadays is that so many histories of people are attached to those ships,” said Joanna.

“There’s always a story that you can relate to that connects you to a ship, even if you’re not directly related to somebody who travelled or worked on the ship you can always find a story that you can, on an emotional level, relate to.

“And I think that’s the joy of having so much social history in one place.”

The story of the Great Western is the story of how our modern, global, interconnected world came to be and how Bristol was at the heart of it all.

It is a story about which Bristolians can rightfully be proud and which we will watch unfold in front of our eyes as the ship is rebuilt.

Main photo: Mohiudin Malik

Read more: Brunel’s SS Great Britain to be recreated in working dry dock

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