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The Great Iron Ship
The Great Iron Ship
Hardcover
First published July 30, 2003
5 people are currently reading
63 people want to read
About the author
James Dugan
7 books2 followersThere is more than one author with this name
James Dugan was a historian, editor and magazine article writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Jacques Cousteau.
Dugan had a long-lasting connection with Jacques Cousteau. Dugan first met Cousteau in 1944 during the liberation of France. At this time he was a Yank magazine correspondent. Much of his writing in the 50's and 60's concerns underwater exploration with Captain Jacques Cousteau. Dugan received the Grand Prix, Cannes International Film Festival award for the documentary The Silent World in 1956. He was also part of the team that produced the Academy Award-winning documentaries The Silent World (1956) and World Without Sun (1964). Dugan wrote the narration for both films. Dugan edited Cousteau's books The Silent World (1953) and World Without Sun (1965) and co-authored The Living Sea (1963) with Cousteau.
James Dugan died June 3, 1967 in Panama City, FL from a heart attack at the age of 55. He was buried at sea.
James Dugan was a historian, editor and magazine article writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Jacques Cousteau.
Dugan had a long-lasting connection with Jacques Cousteau. Dugan first met Cousteau in 1944 during the liberation of France. At this time he was a Yank magazine correspondent. Much of his writing in the 50's and 60's concerns underwater exploration with Captain Jacques Cousteau. Dugan received the Grand Prix, Cannes International Film Festival award for the documentary The Silent World in 1956. He was also part of the team that produced the Academy Award-winning documentaries The Silent World (1956) and World Without Sun (1964). Dugan wrote the narration for both films. Dugan edited Cousteau's books The Silent World (1953) and World Without Sun (1965) and co-authored The Living Sea (1963) with Cousteau.
James Dugan died June 3, 1967 in Panama City, FL from a heart attack at the age of 55. He was buried at sea.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 11, 2020
This was one of those lucky thrift shop finds; I picked up a first edition of this book with a more or less intact dust jacket for a couple of dollars. Canadian dollars, that is, so maybe 75 cents elsewhere.
I can't believe I have been on the planet for as long as I have without having heard of this ship. I hate to use the word "amazing" any more as it has been compromised by simpletons ("that sandwich was amazing"), but it's hard to avoid the use of that particular word when describing the Great Eastern. This ship was floating before the American civil war, but would still be considered a huge ship today. Back in 1853 it would have been nothing short of ...well, a marvel. It was a steamer designed to carry 4,000 passengers. Two thousand workers laboured to install two sets of engines, one engine to turn the 58 foot paddlewheels and the other to turn the twenty-four foot screw. She shipped fifteen thousand tons of coal! She required 3,000,000 inch-thick rivets driven by hand by 200 rivet gangs. The Great Eastern was obviously a magnificent structure and I could spout stats for hours, but that would be basically rewriting the book. In fact, it occurs to me now that Mt Dugan throws a lot of statistics at the reader, often a mistake that would cause the reader's interest to lag. That isn't the case here. Dugan captured my interest on page one and held it throughout the book.
The Great Eastern had quite the career: she survived four mutinies and one of the worst storms ever seen in the Atlantic. She sank four ships (accidentally, but more than are sunk by most warships). Thirty-five men were killed on board, quite a number for a watercraft that was never sunk and never went to war. During the Civil War, she was chartered as a troopship to take troops from England to Canada to bolster our defences just in case our neighbour to the south got uppity again and had to be taught another lesson as in 1812-14. Fenians and all that, you know. Besides, many of our able-bodied Canadian boys were off fighting...the Civil War!
Speaking of the Civil War, it's interesting to speculate on what would have happened if the Confederacy had chartered the Great Eastern. What a blockade runner she would have been! It's doubtful that the Union had anything that would catch her or sink her, and good luck boarding anything that high!
So if a reader has an interest in ships or seafaring tales, this is a good choice. Dugan takes you from concept to shipbreaking and everything in between. Due to owners with complete lack of vision, this ship was never exploited to its maximum potential. It retains its place in history as being the ship that laid the Atlantic Cable, but in the end was a ship before its time, a money-loser as no one quite knew what to do with her. Her story is worth the time it takes to read it.
I can't believe I have been on the planet for as long as I have without having heard of this ship. I hate to use the word "amazing" any more as it has been compromised by simpletons ("that sandwich was amazing"), but it's hard to avoid the use of that particular word when describing the Great Eastern. This ship was floating before the American civil war, but would still be considered a huge ship today. Back in 1853 it would have been nothing short of ...well, a marvel. It was a steamer designed to carry 4,000 passengers. Two thousand workers laboured to install two sets of engines, one engine to turn the 58 foot paddlewheels and the other to turn the twenty-four foot screw. She shipped fifteen thousand tons of coal! She required 3,000,000 inch-thick rivets driven by hand by 200 rivet gangs. The Great Eastern was obviously a magnificent structure and I could spout stats for hours, but that would be basically rewriting the book. In fact, it occurs to me now that Mt Dugan throws a lot of statistics at the reader, often a mistake that would cause the reader's interest to lag. That isn't the case here. Dugan captured my interest on page one and held it throughout the book.
The Great Eastern had quite the career: she survived four mutinies and one of the worst storms ever seen in the Atlantic. She sank four ships (accidentally, but more than are sunk by most warships). Thirty-five men were killed on board, quite a number for a watercraft that was never sunk and never went to war. During the Civil War, she was chartered as a troopship to take troops from England to Canada to bolster our defences just in case our neighbour to the south got uppity again and had to be taught another lesson as in 1812-14. Fenians and all that, you know. Besides, many of our able-bodied Canadian boys were off fighting...the Civil War!
Speaking of the Civil War, it's interesting to speculate on what would have happened if the Confederacy had chartered the Great Eastern. What a blockade runner she would have been! It's doubtful that the Union had anything that would catch her or sink her, and good luck boarding anything that high!
So if a reader has an interest in ships or seafaring tales, this is a good choice. Dugan takes you from concept to shipbreaking and everything in between. Due to owners with complete lack of vision, this ship was never exploited to its maximum potential. It retains its place in history as being the ship that laid the Atlantic Cable, but in the end was a ship before its time, a money-loser as no one quite knew what to do with her. Her story is worth the time it takes to read it.
November 13, 2022
I think this book proves I will pick up anything if there is no next chosen book awaiting me.
In the first 20 pages or so I felt silly for my indiscriminate desperation for something, anything to grab and read. BUT I have to admit this proved to be fascinating and well written.
The copy I grabbed was a 1951 edition with a torn dust jacket. On the back of the d.j., not torn away it proclaimed:
This is the ship that——
Killed her designer
Drowned her first captain
Logged four mutinies
Killed 35 men
Survived the Atlantic’s weirdest storm
And so on…
It was an astonishing tale of a ship perhaps ahead of it’s time or perhaps fated to be hated as well as lauded. Too big, too heavy, too unlucky, what a colossal ship with a one-of-a-kind social, maritime history.
Should I very sit at a banquet table with someone who mention the GREAT EASTERN ship I will bit quite a charming and knowledgeable dinner companion! Very unlikely to happen…as unlikely as this memoir of a grand debacle of a tale.
In the first 20 pages or so I felt silly for my indiscriminate desperation for something, anything to grab and read. BUT I have to admit this proved to be fascinating and well written.
The copy I grabbed was a 1951 edition with a torn dust jacket. On the back of the d.j., not torn away it proclaimed:
This is the ship that——
Killed her designer
Drowned her first captain
Logged four mutinies
Killed 35 men
Survived the Atlantic’s weirdest storm
And so on…
It was an astonishing tale of a ship perhaps ahead of it’s time or perhaps fated to be hated as well as lauded. Too big, too heavy, too unlucky, what a colossal ship with a one-of-a-kind social, maritime history.
Should I very sit at a banquet table with someone who mention the GREAT EASTERN ship I will bit quite a charming and knowledgeable dinner companion! Very unlikely to happen…as unlikely as this memoir of a grand debacle of a tale.
Read
December 11, 2013By James Dugan, written in 1953. This book is about the history of the largest and most innovative ship ever built up to the time, which was 1853, the name of this ship was the Great Eastern. The ship was built at the Isle of Dogs in the Thames River in London. She was five times larger than the largest ship afloat at the time, she was 693 feet long by 120 feet wide and her carrying capacity was not exceeded until forty-nine years after her launching. She had three methods of propulsion, paddle wheels on both sides of the hull that were 59 feet in diameter, six masts carrying 6,500 square feet of sail, and a single screw off the stern that could be hoisted out of the water. With the number of masts on the ship there were not names for the individual ones so they were named for the days of the week with the standing joke there is "No Sunday Aboard a Ship".
The career of this ship was not very successful from a financial point of view, in fact it took government intervention by hiring the vessel to used as a cable laying ship. As must come to all ships of commerance is she wound up in the ship wreckers yard in May of 1889. The first ship built that exceeded the size of the Great Eastern was built in 1906. The name of this larger ship was the LUSITANIA.
The career of this ship was not very successful from a financial point of view, in fact it took government intervention by hiring the vessel to used as a cable laying ship. As must come to all ships of commerance is she wound up in the ship wreckers yard in May of 1889. The first ship built that exceeded the size of the Great Eastern was built in 1906. The name of this larger ship was the LUSITANIA.
March 9, 2023
A fantastic account of the Great Eastern and IK Brunel. An astonishing feat of engineering, endurance and invention.
January 3, 2024
A nice mixture of info. Very informative
July 10, 2024
Another fun find from the Bushmills second hand bookshop. A delightful account of the terribly unfortunate steamship Great Eastern - Isambard Kingdom Brunel's final and perhaps fatal adventure.
Of Brunel's trio of great ships (The Great Western, The Great Britain and The Great Eastern ) this was the last, the largest and the least lucky. Dugan delivers a skilful and entertaining tale of the different passages in the ship's thirty year career, starting with the very first trauma of her long delayed launch - too heavy to shift off the sideways slipway until a final desperate attempt, some months after the first.
Dugan also gives us an insight into the politics and commerce of the day, when engineering innovation and capitalist finance walked hand in hand towards a new era, except that the Great Eastern bankrupted six corporations.
Her passengers included many notables, such as Jules Verne whose imagination must have been stretched to encompass Great Eastern's titanic dimensions, Paul Reuter - who founded a news agency on the back of his telegraphic experiences with the ship, Lord Kelvin the scientist whose temperature scale goes down to the absolute zero - a depth of despair many of Great Eastern's owners must have known.
The book was written in 1953, 70 years ago - and remarkably the author was able to meet one living person who in the 1890s had been one of the last to walk the great leviathan's decks. It's strange to think how - by so few links - the present can touch the past.
The ship reached into the age of photography and so the book is peppered with images that even at this distance cannot hide the astounding size of the beast. In all her 30 year career she remained the largest ship in the world and held that record until almost a decade after she had been broken up for scrap - a process that, given the strength of her construction, required a wrecking ball to shake her solid rivets free.
The double bottomed construction kept her safe if somewhat listing after a collision with a uncharted rock outside New York that now bears her name.
I knew the Great Eastern finally found her niche as a cable laying maestro, laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866 (as well as retrieving and splicing the broken end of her own unsuccessful attempt in 1865). Those chapters were, for the me, the most fascinating detailing the paying out of the cable, the constant checking that it was in communication with the base and laborious checking of any potential faults. A miracle of seamanship, physics and engineering. However, I didn't realise that she went on to lay many more cables of inordinate lengths - her size making her the only behemoth suited to such challenges.
If Brunel had survived maybe he would have managed to ensure she was used as intended from the start on the long hauls to the Far East, rather than unprofitable joy rides to New York. But she was and should remain the a miracle of engineering ingenuity and ambition.
Of Brunel's trio of great ships (The Great Western, The Great Britain and The Great Eastern ) this was the last, the largest and the least lucky. Dugan delivers a skilful and entertaining tale of the different passages in the ship's thirty year career, starting with the very first trauma of her long delayed launch - too heavy to shift off the sideways slipway until a final desperate attempt, some months after the first.
Dugan also gives us an insight into the politics and commerce of the day, when engineering innovation and capitalist finance walked hand in hand towards a new era, except that the Great Eastern bankrupted six corporations.
Her passengers included many notables, such as Jules Verne whose imagination must have been stretched to encompass Great Eastern's titanic dimensions, Paul Reuter - who founded a news agency on the back of his telegraphic experiences with the ship, Lord Kelvin the scientist whose temperature scale goes down to the absolute zero - a depth of despair many of Great Eastern's owners must have known.
The book was written in 1953, 70 years ago - and remarkably the author was able to meet one living person who in the 1890s had been one of the last to walk the great leviathan's decks. It's strange to think how - by so few links - the present can touch the past.
The ship reached into the age of photography and so the book is peppered with images that even at this distance cannot hide the astounding size of the beast. In all her 30 year career she remained the largest ship in the world and held that record until almost a decade after she had been broken up for scrap - a process that, given the strength of her construction, required a wrecking ball to shake her solid rivets free.
The double bottomed construction kept her safe if somewhat listing after a collision with a uncharted rock outside New York that now bears her name.
I knew the Great Eastern finally found her niche as a cable laying maestro, laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866 (as well as retrieving and splicing the broken end of her own unsuccessful attempt in 1865). Those chapters were, for the me, the most fascinating detailing the paying out of the cable, the constant checking that it was in communication with the base and laborious checking of any potential faults. A miracle of seamanship, physics and engineering. However, I didn't realise that she went on to lay many more cables of inordinate lengths - her size making her the only behemoth suited to such challenges.
If Brunel had survived maybe he would have managed to ensure she was used as intended from the start on the long hauls to the Far East, rather than unprofitable joy rides to New York. But she was and should remain the a miracle of engineering ingenuity and ambition.
July 24, 2012
I had only vaguely heard of the Great Eastern before reading The Great Iron Ship by James Dugan. It was probably a quick blip in a history book that I read. I’m very glad I had a chance to get to know more about her! This book was highly entertaining, and I got the feeling that the author had done so much research on the topic that he had to restrain himself from adding too much detail and run the risk of boring his audience. The book was full of unrelated bits of information: one section mentioned a gentleman named Henry Cole in passing, and a footnote informed us that, “This man invented the Christmas card.”
The Great Eastern, for those who don’t know, was a massive ship launched in 1858. She was almost 700 feet long and could hold 4,000 passengers, though she never actually did. She was also a disaster from the get-go. She was so huge, she couldn’t even be launched properly. It took months and several tries just to get her in the water. She was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (What a name, yeah?), who was famous for his big plans and boundless energy. That’s all very inspiring in theory, but in practice the ship was just too honkin’ huge for her time. She would pull into port and accidentally crush the wharf, other ships, and anything else that got in her way. Logistically, fitting her out properly was a nightmare, and the ship turned out to be a black hole sucking up money and human lives. Finally they gave up on the whole posh passenger liner idea and converted her to help lay transatlantic telegraph cable, so at least she made herself useful. In her final days, depressingly, she was a giant floating billboard for a department store in England. Still, in her day thousands of people came to see her (she was a big site-seeing attraction), and Jules Verne sailed on her while he was writing 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.
The Great Eastern, for those who don’t know, was a massive ship launched in 1858. She was almost 700 feet long and could hold 4,000 passengers, though she never actually did. She was also a disaster from the get-go. She was so huge, she couldn’t even be launched properly. It took months and several tries just to get her in the water. She was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (What a name, yeah?), who was famous for his big plans and boundless energy. That’s all very inspiring in theory, but in practice the ship was just too honkin’ huge for her time. She would pull into port and accidentally crush the wharf, other ships, and anything else that got in her way. Logistically, fitting her out properly was a nightmare, and the ship turned out to be a black hole sucking up money and human lives. Finally they gave up on the whole posh passenger liner idea and converted her to help lay transatlantic telegraph cable, so at least she made herself useful. In her final days, depressingly, she was a giant floating billboard for a department store in England. Still, in her day thousands of people came to see her (she was a big site-seeing attraction), and Jules Verne sailed on her while he was writing 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.
March 5, 2009
I am not usually a fan of non-fiction, and I know nothing about nor am I interested in maritime history. But this book was so well written, and the story so ridiculous, that it was completely enjoyable. This is a story about the largest ship ever built causing nothing but death, destruction, and ruination of everything that had anything to do with it. As you read it, you can just hear the witty author chuckling to himself at the absurdity of it all.
May 16, 2009
The Great Eastern was launched in 1858-she was the largest steamship afloat, 5 times the size of the biggest vessel then existing. Her 22,500-ton displacement was not exceeded for almost 50 years. She was designed to carry 4000 passengers and to make the 22,000 mile round trip to Ceylon without refueling. The Great Eastern was never a success mostly due to poor management. But regardless, it was a great story.
December 22, 2013
The Great Eastern has always enthralled me, this book written 60 yrs ago, and 100 yrs after the ships launch is outstanding. It is incredible the lives that intersected with the Great Iron Ship, including Lincoln, Jules Verne, Napoleon the III and many others. I have always been interested in this ship due to my grandfather owning a Currier and Ives print that is now 150 yrs old or so, and I read my grandfather's copy of the book. Wonderfully written history.
November 10, 2015
Brunel's ship was ahead of it's time and the available technology and although regarded overall as a failure it was still a magnificent and daring achievement.
James Dugan's book brings the vessel and it's passengers and crews to life (the better heeled travellers, Captains and officers as little evidence remains of the steerage travellers and ordinary sailors) and sheds light on society in the latter part of the 19th century.
James Dugan's book brings the vessel and it's passengers and crews to life (the better heeled travellers, Captains and officers as little evidence remains of the steerage travellers and ordinary sailors) and sheds light on society in the latter part of the 19th century.
May 13, 2015
This is a great story of a gigantic ship and the owners who, all but one, seemed to be adept at missing opportunities to capitalize on her strengths. The Great Eastern was built in 1857, and her length of 693 feet went unmatched until 1899, her full length and displacement unmatched until 1906.
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