SS Great Britain

The SS Great Britain. We were in Bristol and it would have been a shame not to visit one of the city’s most famous attractions. It is strange. I’ve heard of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (it would be difficult not to have in the UK), and was aware of a lot of his spectacular feats of civil engineering, and the links to Bristol, with the Great Western Railway, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and ship building. I was also aware of the SS Great Britain, a metal steam ship, and that it was famous, with all kinds of shipping firsts.

But a trip to its site on Spike Island (not the one that held the infamous Stone Roses concert) was an eye opener. To both Brunel’s genius, and how amazing a piece of engineering the SS Great Britain was, and what an amazing history it has had.

It would be easy just to write a very fact driven piece about the ship and Brunel (which would be very long and very dry — much like the dock the ship sits in). and I will mention a couple of them as I go along, but I want this to be more of an impression piece, a look and feel of the site.

We got the little ferry across from the ‘mainland’, and to be fair we very nearly didn’t go inside the site. We ummed and aahed about going in. At £18 it sounds a bit expensive, but when were we likely to be back in Bristol to have the chance to do it again? And when we had finished wandering around, we both though that it was actually good value for money.

The first thing that hits you is the scale. Granted, it isn’t a patch on the cruise ships that dwarf towns nowadays, but it is still an impressive size, especially considering it was the first ship to be built of iron, and that it was built over 175 years ago. It’s difficult (given the angles you have to work with on the site) to get the whole ship in a single shot, and my camera does wide angle well.

They work a one-way system around the site well. You see the mock up of how the dockside would have worked in the early nineteenth century, and you walk around that before being directed down under the glass to the hull of the ship.

There are three sets of doors to go through to get in and out of the hull area, which may seem excessive, but it’s required to keep the humidity down to Arizona desert levels of less than 20%. It is the only way to keep the rust from consuming the rest of the hull. You can see little holes all around where the salt water took hold in the thirty odd years it was laying scuttled in the Falkland Islands.

At the rear is a rebuilt replica rudder and propeller (another first, steam ships all had paddles before this one was built). They are much bigger than me, but compared to the size of the rest of the ship I would have expected them to be larger, yet they obviously worked well enough to power the ship in its steam powered days.

We come back out to dodge between raindrops into the first of two museums. The one to the SS Great Britain. From the building of it with all the new technologies Brunel used in doing so; on to its first life as a transatlantic passenger ship; then to its refitting to become a emigrate steam ship for voyages to Australia; the removal of its engine to convert it into a windjammer for passenger voyages to San Francisco; before finally being converted to a goods only transport; and finally how it became a coal storage hub in the Falklands where it supplied British ships for sea battles in the First World War.

But by the 1930’s its useful life was over, and it was scuttled in Sparrow Cove and left to the elements. Only to be rescued in 1970 and brought back to Bristol to be restored and become the visitor attraction it is today. The displays are good and there are lots of interactive displays and moving parts to keep children of all ages entertained.

Then you exit the museum and find yourself walking across a walkway onto the deck of the ship. And they really have restored it, so it is truly ‘ship shape and Bristol fashion’. The masts and rigging are all in place, and the paintwork is perfect (even in the rainy weather). The livestock sheds may have stuffed livestock in, but their sounds and smells are realistic enough. We cross the line on the deck into the first class only section. The animal sounds and smells are gone and there is more space to wander about to the stern of the ship and the helm.

Only one of the doors to the decks below is open, and you descend into the nineteenth century to explore two levels of history. Towards the bow is the steerage, and it is cramped. No chance of swinging cats, there is barely room to walk through parts of it, and it is stark, noisy and smelly, and in this space, passengers would be on top of each other for two long months.

The first class may be better decorated, with more space to move around (well, if they stopped hanging stuffed birds on the walls), but the bunks are still short and narrow. Now I’m tall and wide, and I’m not sure it would be possible to find a comfortable position in a bunk at all unless I suddenly had legs that would screw off.

There is a large dining room (and it is used for private functions nowadays), and we did a double take at the model of a woman sat at one of the tables. It looks the spitting image of a friend of ours, but dressed in finery in first class, something which would probably be against their proletariat views on such things.

In the very boughs of the ship there is a level which shows soldiers and their horses, an image of the time the ship was used to transport troops during the ill-fated Crimean War.

The exit is down here as well, and you are funnelled out to the starboard side of the ship where you can walk around to the bow of the ship and the impressive figures there.

We also continued around the ship and into the Albion dock, the last remaining dry dock in use in Bristol before heading back to the second museum of the day.

All about Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s life and his works. The entrance gives a photo opportunity to pose in front of the vast chains of an anchor, wearing his trademark top hat. (Recreating a famous image of him doing the same.) One that, with my penchant for hats, I wasn’t going to pass up.

Again, it is very interactive (our favourite was trying to draw circles with out fingers on a tablet whilst sat in a rocking train carriage). It also shows how prolific he was as well, and we were surprised how many of his works we had seen or been on.

The main room is dominated by his head.

Yes, it is huge, and part of the experience is a six-minute film show that takes place in the upper half of his head. It’s from his POV and to be honest it’s a bit trippy, and the sudden bursts of steam were unexpected to say the least.

And then we were done, and it was time to exit through the extensive gift shop where I bought all the regular faves of guide book, fridge magnet and pen, plus a Brunel inventions pack of Top Trumps.

It took us three hours to get around the whole site, but it didn’t seem that long at all. A good day out.

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