The first book to provide an overview of all of Brunel’s vessels, richly illustrated, and endorsed by the SS Great Britain Trust.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel created a number of quite revolutionary steamships - the Great Western which was the first practical transatlantic paddle-steamer; the Great Britain, the first iron-built screw-driven liner; and the monster Great Eastern which remained the largest ship in the world for almost half a century. Besides these well-known wonders of the maritime world, Brunel also worked with the Admiralty on the introduction of the screw propeller into naval service.

In the past three centuries the ship has developed from the relatively unsophisticated sail-driven vessel which would have been familiar to the sailors of the Tudor navy, to the huge motor-driven container ships, nuclear submarines and vast cruise liners that ply our seas today. Who were the innovators and builders who, during that span of time, prompted and instigated the most significant advances? In the past three centuries the ship has developed from the relatively unsophisticated sail-driven vessel which would have been familiar to the sailors of the Tudor navy, to the huge motor-driven container ships, nuclear submarines and vast cruise liners that ply our seas today. Who were the innovators and builders who, during that span of time, prompted and instigated the most significant advances? In this new book the author describes the lives and deeds of more the 120 great engineers, scientists, philosophers, businessmen, shipwrights, naval architects and inventors who shaped ship design and shipbuilding world wide. Covering the story chronologically, and going back briefly even to Archimedes, such well-known names as Anthony Deane, Peter the Great, James Watt, Robert Fulton and Isambard Kingdom Brunel share space with lesser known characters like the luckless Frederic Sauvage, a pioneer of screw propulsion who, unable to interest the French navy in his tests in the early 1830s, was bankrupted and landed in debtor’s prison. With the inclusion of such names as Ben Lexcen, the Australian yacht designer who developed the controversial winged keel for the 1983 America’s Cup, the story is brought right up to date. Concise linking chapters place all these innovators in context so that a clear and fascinating history of the development of ships and shipbuilding emerges from the pages. An original and important new reference book.

Originally published in 1976, this book by a group of engineers, each distinguished for work in their field, describes the achievements of I. K. Brunel, the giant among nineteenth-century engineers, whose works include the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and three famous ships, Great Western, Great Britain and Great Eastern.

This book traces the life of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859), who is rightly revered as one of the greatest of all engineers. His leading role in the transport revolution of the nineteenth century, and especially in the building of the Great Western Railway, left an indelible mark on the British landscape. His achievements captured the imagination of his contemporaries and subsequent generations, whilst his colossal energy and determination to carry out projects on the largest scale and to an extremely high standard set him apart from his rivals. Brunel tells the story both of the engineer, who followed his father Marc into what was then a new profession, and of the man. It explores his successes and failures, at home and abroad, including both the broad gauge GWR and the SS Great Eastern, as R. Angus Buchanan expertly brings out Brunel's imagination, drive and inventiveness. Above all, it sets him in the context of his times, showing both what made him who he was and how he made the most of the great opportunities offered to him.

The story of Brunel's most famous ship and the people who knew her, using new archive sources

How the introduction of steam, iron, and steel required new rules and new ways of thinking for the design and building of ships. In the 1800s, shipbuilding moved from sail and wood to steam, iron, and steel. The competitive pressure to achieve more predictable ocean transportation drove the industrialization of shipbuilding, as shipowners demanded ships that enabled tighter scheduling, improved performance, and safe delivery of cargoes. In Bridging the Seas, naval historian Larrie Ferreiro describes this transformation of shipbuilding, portraying the rise of a professionalized naval architecture as an integral part of the Industrial Age. Picking up where his earlier book, Ships and Science, left off, Ferreiro explains that the introduction of steam, iron, and steel required new rules and new ways of thinking for designing and building ships. The characteristics of performance had to be first measured, then theorized. Ship theory led to the development of quantifiable standards that would ensure the safety and quality required by industry and governments, and this in turn led to the professionalization of naval architecture as an engineering discipline. Ferreiro describes, among other things, the technologies that allowed greater predictability in ship performance; theoretical developments in naval architecture regarding motion, speed and power, propellers, maneuvering, and structural design; the integration of theory into ship design and construction; and the emergence of a laboratory infrastructure for research.