Brunel's SS Great Britain, the first great iron screw steamer, was launched
On this day · 19 July 1843
On July 19, 1843, Prince Albert floated out the largest ship afloat — and the first to marry an iron hull to a screw propeller.
On July 19, 1843, Prince Albert travelled to Bristol to float out the SS Great Britain, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Steamship Company. Schools and shops closed, bells rang, and cannon fired as tens of thousands watched.
Other vessels had used iron hulls, and others had used screw propellers — but Great Britain was the first large ocean-going ship to combine both. At launch she was the largest ship in the world.
In 1845 she crossed the Atlantic in about 14 days, the first iron steamship to do so.
Grounded, salvaged, and eventually abandoned in the Falkland Islands, she was towed home to Bristol in 1970 and now sits restored in the very dock where she was built — a working museum of Victorian ambition.
Sources & references
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