The Great Eastern

by Howard Rodman

  Dr. Murdstone only said, “Indeed.” And then, after some musing, decided once again to demonstrate that he, too, was a man at odds with his appearance: “I will not waste your time. If you know the etiology, you likely know the prognosis. Your Mr. Brunel will either recover, or he won’t. The best we can do for him is to keep him horizontal, and to do what we can to reduce fever should fever occur. Should he not succumb, there is a spectrum of outcomes that range from full recovery to near-complete paralysis. He may not be able to walk. He may not be able to speak. His handwriting may become shrunken, readable only with a glass. That is, should he live. I say these words in front of him because though he cannot move, or talk, or even blink, he can hear every word, every sigh, every rustle; smell each medicinal; feel the comforting presence of a damp cloth on his forehead; taste the wood of the depressor I inserted into his mouth; and see, to the extent it falls within his field of vision, every person in this room. In short: his body has become a cage, and we none of us hold the key.

  “And then, of course it is possible—not probable, but possible—that he will snap to, sit up, smile broadly and symmetrically, walk out of here tomorrow afternoon, fit as you or I, an abominable cheroot clenched between his teeth. And neither I nor anyone can tell you, among those outcomes, which be the more likely. That, I will tell you plainly, is, as referenced, in the hands of the Deity.”

  The lascar was very still. When he finally spoke his voice was calm, dispassionate. “It may be, Dr. Murdstone, that you and I mean different things when we say the word ‘deity.’ But that is of no material concern. I have read John Abercrombie’s very fine Pathological and Practical Researches on Diseases of the Brain and Spinal Cord, as well as Creswell’s Pathological Anatomy, and, of course, Cruveilhier. So I understand your diagnosis, together with the prospects which may greet us as we move forward. My only disagreement, Dr. Murdstone, and it is not a grave one, is that I propose that his head be slightly elevated, as Lallemand would counsel. It will not harm, and there is a small chance it might assist. I suggest this only because I have French, and thus access to the Continental literature. I do not mean to claim that my skills as diagnostician or as physician are superior to yours, as they are demonstrably not in either case.”

  Young Shropham, who had abandoned his post at the receiving desk to stand within listening range just outside the surgery, could scarce believe what his ears were hearing, and could only imagine the reaction of Dr. Murdstone within. Why had Brunel been brought to Mile End, as opposed to the Royal London, or other establishments more suitable to those of his station? Why would he have been brought here by lascars, rather than by his manservants, his draughtsmen, his engineers? And who was this babu who knew, or seemed to know, quite so much? This nighttime arrival had begun curiously but was becoming, with reflection, more queer each moment to the next.

  Most nights, when his compositions were interrupted, Shropham found himself galled, annoyed, resentful; but this was less an interruption than, perhaps, an invitation. The opening of a door. But a door to where? In his young life, Shropham knew only one kind of door: the one that opens onto an abyss. He did not know the exact nature of the calamity that was about to befall, but calamity, he was certain, could be the only outcome.

  * * *

  —

  MR. BRUNEL WAS SOON transported from the surgery to a room on the first floor of which he was the sole resident—a lodging anomalous for Mile End, which, in the main, consisted of unwalled wards. Brunel was attended to by his lascars, who would sleep on the floor. When on occasion one of them would leave the other two would remain, not leaving the bedside, even to visit the water closet. They seemed to subsist on little save the small parcels of food, wrapped in cloth, that one of the lascars would bring back with him from his ventures outside.

  The next morning news must have got round that Brunel was in residence because deliverymen with flowers began to arrive in a near-constant stream, and visitors would appear, clad in funereal black, their faces grave, asking to be taken upstairs. Dr. Murdstone did indeed relish Mile End’s new notoriety, which allowed him to function not only as a physician but as a master of ceremonies. Both he and Shropham stayed on past the official endpoints of their shifts, eager or anxious, respectively, to see the day’s developments.

  Dr. Murdstone was a strict guardian of Brunel’s apartment, allowing only one guest at a time (save, of course, the lascars). At ten in the morning, Shropham overheard a heated discussion between Murdstone and one of the visitors, a lad older than himself yet still in his teens, whom Shropham surmised to be Brunel’s son. The lad—the son?—wanted Brunel to be moved to another hospital where better care might be provided. Dr. Murdstone was insistent that the dangers concomitant with the transport far outweighed the benefit of a nicer bed, a more capacious room, an airier view. Shropham heard Murdstone accuse the young man of selfishness, of wanting a locale more convenient to the family’s work and lodgings, not all the way out here, near the docks, where the bells of St Mary-le-Bow could be heard. The man, angered, said with some real vehemence that the conditions at Mile End were insalubrious. The doctor replied that Mr. Brunel was under his care and that in his best professional judgment the patient should stay put. The conversation did not end in rapprochement.

  Later that morning when young Shropham emerged from the WC he caught glimpse of something he was, he strongly suspected, never meant to see: the articulate lascar counting, into the doctor’s podgy hands, an unfathomably large number of gold coins, mostly sovereigns, but some older five-guinea pieces as well. When at noon the doctor introduced the lascars to the visiting John Scott Russell as his “staff,” Shropham was less astonished than he’d otherwise might have been. The situation was clear: the lascars were masquerading as the doctor’s servants. But there was sufficient pecuniary reason to believe that the relationship, in truth, was now vice versa.

  The next morning, just before the end of his shift, Shropham heard loud thumping noises from upstairs, as if an armoire were being moved or a bed were being dropped. Then the creak of an opening door followed by the syncopated stutter of feet, many feet, on the staircase. Shropham turned his gaze to the hallway and saw, coming toward, a procession unimaginable: Brunel, in full dress, cheroot box, top hat, was strapped to a large wooden board, and was being borne, near-upright, by the lascars. It was a strange bookend to his arrival, two days previous, carried to Mile End on sailcloth by the same crew. The thoughts sprang to Shropham’s brain: You cannot remove him. The doctor will not allow— But before those thoughts could become utterances, Shropham saw Dr. Murdstone, shaven and pomaded, bringing up the rear.

  “I had thought he was too weak to be transported,” said Shropham finally.

  “In the larger sense, yes,” said Murdstone. “But this is the launch of the Great Eastern, an endeavor upon which our Mr. Brunel has worked for the better part of a decade. Scott Russell thinks he should be there. The world thinks he should be there. And we—” Here he gestured to include the Lascars. “We concur.” It was at that moment that a scrape of wheels and a clop of hooves confirmed the arrival of a carriage. And so Shropham stood silent while the great civil engineer was carried upright through the door. Silent, unmoving, paralyzed, but upright, silhouetted in the harsh East End light, bobbing sidewise, as if he were a cutout in a shadow play. Shropham watched the grim procession as it approached the carriage. Then opened his ruled notebook and turned back to his adagio.

  THREE

  BRUNEL HAD CONCEIVED of the Great Eastern in 1851 and on that same day did jot down some specifications:

  A volume six times greater than any craft now extant. Six hundred eighty feet in length, with dimensions proportionate: beam of 83 feet and a draught of 58 feet. Cladding of plate iron, with sufficient overlap. Thirty thousand plates should suffice. Each plate 7/8 inch thick therefor third of a ton apiece. The hull to be doubled. All vertical joints to be butt joints and to be twice-riveted wherever required by the Engineer. Bulkheads to be at
60 feet intervals. No cast iron to be used anywhere except for slide valves and cocks without special permission of the Engineer.

  The Great Eastern could carry as much in one crossing as could smaller ships in half a dozen; and the cost of crewing one large ship, as opposed to six lesser, would in theory be similarly advantageous. To propel the craft Brunel had conceived of a screw but also twin paddle wheels, with auxiliary sail power. The wheels permitted a shallower draught which would, Brunel claimed, enable the Great Eastern to make port at the many-sided, smoky, magnificent city of Calcutta, a harbor that the Hooghly River would otherwise render inaccessible to a craft of this size.

  To the end of constructing this floating city Brunel and Scott Russell were able, on the basis of Brunel’s plans, to raise working capital of some £120,000. Yet the building of the ship was not without perils financial and technical, and what had been envisaged as the work of one year became nigh unto interminable. The keel was not laid until 1854 at Scott Russell’s yard in Millward on the Isle of Dogs. One creditors’ meeting in 1856 almost liquidated the enterprise entire; and the task of launching the ship, 680 feet in length and 12,000 tons of deadweight load, could not be accomplished in the traditional manner. The geometry—long ship, narrow river—required that the Great Eastern be built and slid into the Thames longitudinally. Thus Scott Russell was forced to purchase the property adjacent to his yard, and for no small sum.

  There was also the need to recruit and train some 200 skilled men for the riveting gang. The first attempt to cast the crankshaft failed, as did the second, each attempt time consuming and ruinously expensive. When in November 1857 the Great Eastern was finally ready to be launched, her steam winches were insufficient to the task. Brunel, who’d been urging Scott Russell to purchase hydraulic rams (at no little expense), was livid. The next attempt, that December, attended by Prince Albert and the Prince of Wales, was no more successful than the first, and the blame was laid at the feet of Brunel: a correspondent to The Spectator opined that the friction of iron on iron was an unknown quantity, one which Brunel has grievously failed to take into account. A third attempt was made on 5th January 1858 but that too failed. A fourth try on 30th January, at last using rams sent down from the Tangye company in Birmingham, was canceled when the winds would not let up.

  So you can readily understand that when on the following day—the hull well-oiled, the Birmingham hydraulics in place—Brunel’s Great Eastern was finally eased into the River Thames, the mood on the dock was more one of relief than of exultation. Brunel would from that day forth ascribe the ardour and misery of the past several years to the frugality of Scott Russell, though the cost of the enterprise had now risen to £732,000—more than £1,000 per foot of ship—and Scott Russell now teetered on the very edge of bankruptcy.

  The fitting out of the Great Eastern took another nineteen months. But now, on 9th September 1859, the Great Eastern was built, kitted out, set in the water, awaiting only ceremony before she was bound for Weymouth, Dorset, then to Holyhead, North Wales. Thence, after provisioning: to Portland, Maine, where the Grand Trunk Railway had already constructed a purpose-built jetty to accommodate the ship. Holyhead to Portland, by steam! A voyage that, when Brunel first conceived of it, would have been regarded as pipe dream. Yet here they were, on a crisp early-fall day, assembled to witness its origination.

  Perhaps owing to the sheer number of departures scheduled, then canceled—and perhaps because Scott Russell, to increase his income in precarious times, had sold 3,000 tickets to the 1857 launch, a day filled with postponement, disappointment, yet no refund—the spectatorial crowd was far thinner this time. The Millward yard contained some 200 souls: relations of the workers and outfitters, who wanted to see what they had only heard described, and the parties of those embarking as passengers, who had been boarded earlier that morning.

  There were some prominent personages, but no Prince Albert this time, no Prince of Wales either. On the platform before the bow were several members of the board of the ship’s holding company; Scott Russell; Dr. Murdstone; the lascars; and, of course, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, tied ankle shoulder and waist to an oaken plank and elevated to 75 degrees. Brunel’s eyes, mobile in a frozen face, tracked each stage: the waving of handkerchiefs from the deck; the singling of the immense chained-metal lines, each forged link the size of a man’s chest, and far heavier; the raucous clatter and hiss of the steam engines, at first a cacophony, then a low rhythmic thrum as it reached speed; the dark oily plash of the grand wheels, turning now, scooping tons of river water with each revolution; the flap of the wide white foresails, now unfurled. Brunel watched the bottle of Champagne that Scott Russell banged thrice against the hull until at last it shattered. Now the ship’s great low horn let out its mournful, triumphant bleat; now the platform crew sensed that slow and delirious drift: are we moving backward? Is the ship moving forward? Now a sudden and raucous cheer from the docks. And as Brunel’s Leviathan, his double-clad floating city, began to glide down the Thames toward saltwater seas, a rivulet of salt-water tears began its slide down Brunel’s rigid and unmoving cheek.

  * * *

  —

  SPARE A MOMENT to contemplate the thoughts that his face, voice, body, could not at that instant express. To be surprised at your draughting table in the dead of night. Surrounded by lascars, injected with what foul paralytic. Brought to Hell’s own infirmary and treated, if that word can even be used, by a doctor who cared not a whit for his patient. Then left to contemplate, in endless slow minutes within the body’s frozen sarcophagus, that world and family must believe you to be deaf, mute, blind. And ne’er to return.

  The ship slipped down the Thames, heading for the North Sea and thence the Channel. The workers and relations slipped away, headed home, or to tasks, or to their favorite local. The members of the ship’s board repaired to their club. Scott Russell departed alone, letting his feet take him on a long peripheral ramble round the Isle of Dogs. Murdstone and the lascars—porting the planked corpus of Mr. Brunel—boarded the awaiting carriage. The sharp-eyed among the scattering crowd might have observed, had they been focused upon it, that Brunel had been carried to the platform by a crew of four lascars, but was carried from the platform by a crew of three. And when at last the carriage returned to Mile End, it most certainly did not escape young Shropham’s notice that the lead lascar had not returned with them. Shropham was curious, of course, but the presentiment of doom, which had hung over his head all morning and which had infected his music with slow tempi and minor thirds, told him it would be far better not to ask. You can see them in Robert Howlett’s photograph of the day. There’s Scott Russell in three-piece suit with watch fob, trouser cuffs rolled against the dockside muck; Lord Derby in bow tie and double-breasted topcoat; Captain William Harrison in a practical coat of sailor’s cloth with a sewn flap concealing the buttons; Brunel himself, in waistcoat, jacket, coat, each with its own lapels, and visible, strapped over the waistcoat, the inevitable cheroot case, bearing the imprint “I.K.B. Athenaeum Club Pall Mall.” And behind Brunel, heads tilted deferentially downward, holding the plank to which Brunel was affixed, the lascars. They are the only ones in the frame who do not wear top hats.

  At some point after the photograph was taken but prior to the launch of the vessel itself—as we can see if we examine Howlett’s photograph of the slip as the Great Eastern departed—Captain Harrison, having boarded, is no longer on the slip; and one of the lascars is no longer present, though which one in particular cannot be ascertained. (The grain of the photograph is larger than would permit the necessary scrutiny.) But we know now that the person absented from the second photograph is the lead lascar. And we know other things as well.

  We know that the lead lascar slipped away from the platform and joined the boarding party queue. That he made his way up the wooden embarkation bridge, angling up to the ship at a tilt of perhaps 30 degrees. That with a nod to a fellow lascar he made his way belowdecks where he disappeared. He wo
uld not be seen again for the next forty-eight hours.

  When he next made himself available to view it was on the morning of 9th September, emerging from the screw chamber in which he’d secreted himself into the larger hall that led to the engine room.

  The engine room proper was fronted by nine massive boilers, larger than any seagoing boilers previously built, of double-joined iron sheets, close riveted. There were, on each shift, twelve stokers in two ranks, whose job consisted in shoveling coal into a furnace. The fire within was too bright to gaze upon direct; the harsh, heated light gave the coal-blacked faces upon whom it shone a hellish aspect. As one stoker scooped the coal the other fed the maw, and again, and again, powering the shafts for paddle and screw, night and day and night.

  On either side of the boiler room were warrens of pipes, starting thick, branching thinner, conducting the steam where needed: to the pistons, whose up-and-down motion powered the revolution of the main crankshaft and of the smaller shafts that drove each of the paddle wheels; through the signaling system; and to the various other places where pressure was needed. Intertwined among them were the feedwater pipes, bringing water to the paddle furnaces and screw furnaces to be converted into steam. The lascar followed the course of the entangled, branching pipes, as difficult to parse as the tubes of the London Pneumatic Post. He moved swiftly, head down, consulting from time to time an ink-drawn sketch, written on foolscap, which seemed to be a rendering of the ship’s steam system. (And, in fact: was.)

  At last he reached the boiler antechamber, just the other side of the bulkhead from the hold where the stokers plied their backlit and exhausting trade. Among the pipes that branched out from the boiler’s side was a feedwater that led to a 300-pound safety valve, which itself vented to the ship’s exterior. Between the boiler and the valve was a pipe jointed to a stopcock. A cock leading to a safety-valve! The very existence of such an arrangement was barbarous. Yet it had been in Brunel’s engineering diagrams, and those diagrams had been faithfully executed. A cock leading to a safety-valve! Even were the most extraordinary vigilance exercised, a feckless steamfitter, an ignorant stoker, had it in his power, by the simple shutting of a cock, to blow the ship from here to Kandahar.