Peter Moore looks back to the Victorian era: a time of engineering prowess, limitless ambition and impressive hats

The Victorians are Britain’s champions. With their tall hats, long tail coats and whiskery faces, they tore up the rule book for British society in the 19^th century and bequeathed the younger generations a tidy public transport system, a developed political structure and an ingrained sense of duty. However, their mark was not merely social: they spent much of their time enthralled with building schemes, constructing just about everything that they could dream up.

Viaducts, bridges, mills, mines and smouldering chimneys sprouted from the ground like daisies, changing the beautiful British vistas for good. In the meantime, fresh from an eternity lumbering happily in the fields, the masses were rounded up by parish beadles and set hard to work amongst the sweat and soot of the factories.

Victorians were bent on building ‘things’. It could be argued that the launch of George Stephenson’s Rocket (or the ‘cartwheeled chugger’), eight years before Victoria’s coronation was the event which sparked the Victorian era of innovation. The day itself was marred, however, when the Member of Parliament for Liverpool, trying to catch a better view of proceedings, stepped before the Rocket and as a sad result became the world’s first reported railway casualty.

Other inventions followed. There was the bottom-breaking ‘penny farthing’ bicycle, the light bulb, the telephone, the telegram and the first one-piece toilet. Times were exciting: minds were fresh with excitement and innovation. People wanted more than ‘Spinning Jennys’, they wanted grand designs and glorious projects. What they wanted was Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Brunel is king among Victorian engineers. He was a five foot man with a five foot hat, a dangling cigar and impressive sideboards. If you wanted something doing in the 19^th century, then Brunel was your man. Along with his father, he was responsible for the first tunnel that ran under the Thames, a clutter of fabulous bridges and some equally impressive structures down on the South Devon and Cornwall railway. But when Brunel really wanted to show off, he went for boats.

Brunel, like his Victorian peers, was fascinated by size: bigger was better in almost every event, from exhibitions to empires. Brunel himself, applied himself to making a ‘great’ boat, the SS Great Western. When it finally sailed from Bristol in 1837 to New York, it shaved the normal length of a crossing down by half.

His next project was to do the same with a boat forged of iron. Back then, this was adventurous stuff: an iron boat was about as logical as a house crafted from cheese. However, screw propelled, wrought iron riveted and glimmering under the summer sun, the SS Great Britain (note the ‘Great’ again) was launched with minimal jitters in 1843. The only problem came when the ubiquitous bottle of Champaign missed the side of the boat and Prince Albert was left scurrying about for a new one.

Buoyed (sorry), by the success of his first two steamships, Brunel got together with a ship builder called John Scott Russell and decided upon constructing the largest ship ever built. Her statute (a length of 705 meters and weight of 17,274 tonnes) was imperious and Brunel was meticulous in her design and construction, constantly referring to her as the ‘Great Babe.’

This last project proved a struggle. She was big and clumsy, components were often difficult to source and when completed she couldn’t squeeze out of her dock and she earned the nickname the ‘unlucky’ ship. Still, once completed she performed admirably and helped to lay the first ever trans-Atlantic cable, which in time became essential for future communication between Europe and the Americas.

However, financial difficulties and a series of unfortunate incidents marred the life of the SS Great Eastern. Perhaps she was Brunel’s masterpiece, at the limits of Victorian innovation, but for some she was a white elephant. Each minor accident cost thousands of pounds to repair and many declared her to be unsustainable. Eventually, she was sold for scrap in 1889. She was so large that it took a team of people 18 months to dissemble her.

Despite this, the SS Great Eastern survived Brunel. He died shortly before her first voyage to New York, worn down by the exertions of his life and a catalogue of health problems (one of which had seen him have a coin lodged in his throat for numerous years). But today Brunel’s reputation is assured. The work that he completed set the standard for modern seafaring, improving design and pushing the limits of engineering forward in an unprecedented manner.

It wasn’t just a host of Victorian pioneers with anxious wives and looping pipes – the advances in maritime history came as a result of inspired design work, talented engineering and, in the case of Brunel, more than a little touch of genius.

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Discover more about the life of Brunel and Britain’s other pre-eminent Victorians on the History Channel, available on digital television networks and amongst Britain’s most popular television channels.

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