We visited the S.S.Great Britain recently, Brunel’s mighty iron-clad steamer which changed the history of shipping; all our modern freighters, lines, air-craft carriers and battle ships are the maritime children of the Great Britain.
She was launched in 1843, and was at first a transatlantic luxury liner; in 1853 she began her travels to the other side of the world, to Australia, carrying emigrants and passengers to Melbourne. My family travelled to Hobart in Tasmania, possibly via Sydney in the early 1840’s; they went as business people, merchants and traders and ended up with an export import business and ships crossing all across the Pacific and the South China Sea. They journeyed back to Britain from time to time, various members of the family returning home for good, others just visiting before travelling back to Australia.
I don’t imagine that any of them travelled on the Great Britain, although I do intend to see if I can find passenger lists to check, but the exhibition at the docks in Bristol not only showed the ship itself, restored in all its glory, but also tried to give some idea of the contemporary scenes around wharves and quays where passengers and travellers in the 1840’s, 50’s and 60’s would have embarked and disembarked, and the sort of warehouse which the merchants would have stored their goods, goods for export – in the case of my family, wool, whale products, timber, and imports, fine wines, silks, porcelain…
My great-great grandfather had stone warehouses at the harbour in Hobart… but these wooden sheds at the exhibition centre are copies of original timber buildings of the time.
Lois Elsden 