Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/103

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC of the showman, the Great Eastern was sold for the value of her metal and was broken up in the autumn of 1888.

The financial failure of this ship was not due to any excessive first cost, resulting from the very thorough character of her construction, but rather to certain economic conditions of her time. Traffic across the Atlantic, both freight and passenger, was as yet in its infancy; and even if full cargoes had been available, the loading facilities of those days were so inadequate, that the ship would have been delayed in port for an unconscionable length of time. Furthermore, fuel consumption, in that early stage of development of the steam engine, was excessive, the coal consumed per horsepower per hour being about three and one-half to four pounds, as compared with a modern consumption of from one and a quarter to one and a half pounds per horsepower.

A careful study of the construction of this remarkable vessel establishes the fact that over fifty years ago Brunel and Scott Russell produced in the Great Eastern a ship which stands as a model for all time. Realising, in the first place, how vulnerable is an iron vessel which [ 81 ]