BRUNEL (ISAMBARD KINGDOM)

Autograph letter signed ("I K Brunel") to his son Isambard, written after the successful launch of the SS Great Eastern, 2 February 1858, with family provenance

Footnotes

'ALL THE EVILS AND DIFFICULTIES IN SUCH CASES ARE THE RESULT OF OUR OWN IMPRUDENCE OR MISTAKES'

Just two days after the successful launch of the SS Great Eastern on 31 January 1858, a thankful Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) writes a candid letter to his son Isambard revealing his disappointment at the failure of the first launch, giving his own insight as to what went wrong and ascribes the final success to his own dogged determination, favourable weather conditions and a certain amount of divine intervention. It had been a project fraught with difficulties from the beginning and one in which Brunel was heavily invested both financially and physically: 'I never embarked on one thing to which I have so entirely devoted myself, and to which I have devoted so much time, thought and labour, on the success of which I have staked my reputation...' he wrote (www.brunel200.com).

Brunel's ambitious vision was for a ship, originally called Leviathan (and affectionately referred to by him as the 'Great Babe'), capable of taking 4,000 passengers from England to Australia without the need to refuel, the largest iron steamship ever built at that time. He went into partnership with John Scott Russell, an experienced Naval architect and ship builder. Unbeknownst to Brunel, Russell was already in financial trouble and the two men disagreed on many details of the construction. In February 1856, Russell was declared bankrupt and Brunel was forced to take over the project himself. Uncooperative workers and legal wrangling led to slow progress and financial pressures forced an early attempt at launching the ship on 3 November 1857. The launch was a disaster – Brunel could no longer afford the specialist hydraulic launching gear specially built for the project ("...a complete apparatus which could, as I now see, have launched the ship perfectly...") and had to make do with steam winches and capstans worked by teams of men. As a result, in front of a large paying crowd at Napier Yard in Millwall, the ship remained resolutely stranded on its specially constructed launch rails. Two men were killed in the attempt and several others injured. Charles Dickens was in the throng and described the excited scene thus: 'A general spirit of reckless daring seems to animate the majority of the visitors. They delight in insecure platforms; they crowd on small, frail, house-tops; they come up in little cockle-boats, almost under the bows of the great ship... Many in that dense floating mass on the river and the opposite shore would not be sorry to experience the excitement of a great disaster... Others trust with wonderful faith to the prudence and wisdom of the presiding engineer...' In a candid admission to his son, Brunel here admits culpability for the failure and blames himself for listening to the "irritating intrigues and insinuations" of others ("...I did so and hence all the difficulties...").

After several further attempts in November, with the help of a new hydraulic system, fortuitous weather conditions and resorting to fervent prayers (despite believing prayer to be "incompatible with the regular movement of the mechanism of the universe"), the ship was successfully launched on 31 January 1858, a day later than planned. The stress and relief felt by Brunel is palpable in this letter in equal measure. During his final inspection of the ship at Deptford on 5 September 1859, Brunel suffered a stroke from which he was never to recover. He died shortly after the ship's maiden voyage, knowing she had already been damaged by an explosion.

The letter is published in Cecilia Brunel Noble's The Brunels: Father and Son, 1938: '...The next day Isambard wrote himself to his son, and this letter lifts, for a moment, a corner of the curtain which hid from the world the agonies of his soul...' (p.236).

Provenance: Isambard Brunel (1837-1902); given to his brother Henry Marc Brunel (1842-1903) in 1888, according to a note in the accompanying box; his niece Celia Noble; her daughter Cynthia Noble; Miles Jebb, Lord Gladwyn; thence by descent to his niece, the present owner.