Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/88

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC The Great Eastern represented the joint labours of the two most distinguished engineers of the middle period of the nineteenth century, I. K. Brunel and John Scott Russell. The former was responsible for the original idea of the ship, and it was he who suggested that it should be built upon the principles adopted in the rectangular, tubular bridge that had recently been built across the Menai Straits. To Scott Russell, as naval architect, were due the lines and dimensions of the ship and the elaborate system of transverse and longitudinal bulkheads.

Those were the days when the engineer was supreme. He worked with a free hand; and these two men set out to build a ship which should be not only the largest and strongest, but also the safest and most unsinkable vessel afloat. How they succeeded is shown by the fact, that on one of her voyages to New York, the Great Eastern ran over some submerged rocks off Montauk Point, Long Island, and tore two great rents in her outer skin, whose aggregate area was equivalent to a rupture 10 feet wide and 80 feet long. In spite of this damage, which was probably greater in total area [ 70 ]