ss Great Britain, Bristol
'A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses' is 'a free spirit put under restraint'. So explained Joseph Conrad, the master of all matters maritime.
To see Brunel's ss Great Britain, restored and fully rigged in the Bristol dry dock built for its creation, is both exhilarating and frustrating; one longs for motion. As the poet George Herbert noted: 'A great ship asks deep waters.'
It is greatly to the credit of the director and curator of ss Great Britain, Matthew Tanner, his colleagues and trustees, that this is such a vibrant project. We are regularly reminded of the perils of waters, winds and rocks.
Museums of transport are usually at best banal, at worst boring, other than to anoraked aficionados of mechanical minutiae. This place is different. All the technical detail is there but wrapped in a narrative of social history that is intellectual and witty. There is a self-confident and infectious delight in the interpretation.
On 19 July 1843, Prince Albert launched this wonder of engineering. With a screw propeller and a unique iron hull, she was the biggest ship in the world. 'The greatest experiment since the creation,' raved one commentator.
On 19 July 1970, she was towed back to Bristol some 9,000 miles from the Falkland Islands where her rusting hulk had been a warehouse for wool and coal. Thirty-five years later, yet again on 19 July, Great Britain can once more be seen in full glory.
Her nautical career, over nearly a century and a million nautical miles, was a mix of triumph and disaster. As the world's first ocean liner, she crossed the Atlantic in record time but with too few paying passengers.
On her fifth trip she ran aground on the coast of Northern Ireland. She was subsequently used as a clipper, taking emigrants to Australia. She worked as a troop carrier during the Crimean war and the Indian Mutiny and, stripped of her engines, became a 'windjammer' cargo ship before an ill-fated beaching at Port Stanley.
Back home in Bristol, corrosion accelerated. Great Britain was crumbling fast. The solution has been to seal the ship in her dry dock and to build a giant extraction system that keeps humidity below 20 per cent; 'dryer than the Arizona Desert' is the proud boast of the consultants. Glass panels, covered by a thin layer of filtered harbour water, create the appearance of a floating ship.
Far more dramatically, visitors can walk underwater, view the beauty of the caisson and wonder at the ingenuity of the giant screw propeller and rudder.
For me the most moving moment was to stand in front of the great prow, a powerful and beautiful thing. One visitor said, 'Just imagine the bone in her mouth' - the water, he explained, that foams before a moving ship.
There is probably nothing more inaccessible than a ship. But the trust and curators have ensured access to all areas. Visitors in wheelchairs and those with mobility problems can reach everything via a lift cleverly hidden in the funnel.
Handheld guides have been developed for the blind, visually impaired, deaf and hard of hearing visitors. These complement the well designed and easy-to-use personal audio systems available for all visitors.
A visit to Great Britain starts from the Dockyard Museum, whose dull exterior of scruffy brick and corrugated iron belies an imaginative theatrical interior. This is a veritable Tardis of an experience.
The building is packed with touchable artefacts, interactive displays and well-written, well-illustrated information panels. In reverse chronology, the history of the ship is explained with rare panache.
I have always argued that the best museums are those that have a distinct personality. This display has a buzz, a wow factor about it, that puts to shame those many institutions that take safe or predictable interpretative paths.
Visitors can view an authentic ship's biscuit, attempt to steer the ship, to raise the propeller and - joy of joys for this unrepentant child - to sound the original steam whistle.
The information on display is comprehensive and based on documentary research: scholarship without gimmickry. It was good to see an image of Isambard Kingdom other than the one posing against those giant chains of the Great Eastern.
An analysis of the 15,000 or so passengers to Australia reveals gold-diggers, consumptives, missionaries and soldiers as well as the first All England Cricket team to play - successfully - down under. The novelist Anthony Trollope, we learn, wrote his turgid novel Lady Anna onboard.
We can only regret that the voyage was not choppier. And it was intriguing to discover that the Gibbs family, owners of the ship in the late 19th century, built their Bristol mansion on the substantial proceeds of guano. Could there be a more fitting metaphor for capitalism?
A sloping gangway leads to the ship itself. The cramped accommodation for steerage passengers with rations of porridge, pease soup, hard tack and salt pork is compared with the opulence of the first-class dining salon.
A line painted on the top deck kept the hoi polloi away from the privileged. The cabins and surgeon's quarters have full-sized models and smells, including the inevitable outcome of seasickness.
In the galley we learn that the brass pans, spits and bain-maries were used to roast and broil the more than a thousand live sheep, pigs, cattle and poultry that started the voyage. A large porpoise hangs too, ready for slicing. The displays have style.
But the project is far from finished. In future years, the waterfront buildings will need to be recreated. Most excitingly, £600,000 has been raised for a full-scale replica of the ship's engine.
There will again be noise and vibration within the heart of the ship, sounds and sensations to gladden Kipling's engineer McAndrew who hymned the glories of steam 'from coupler-flange to spindle-guide… hear that note? - the rod's return whings glimmerin' through the guides.' I will whing back to Bristol, as should anyone interested in museum excellence.
Peter Lewis is a writer and a past director of Beamish, the North of England Open Air Museum
Project data
Cost: £11.3m
Funders: Heritage Lottery Fund £8.4m, Millennium Commission
Architect: Alec French Partnership
Conservation: EURA Conservation
Contractors: Bluestone, Space Decks, Ove ARUP
'A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses' is 'a free spirit put under restraint'. So explained Joseph Conrad, the master of all matters maritime.
To see Brunel's ss Great Britain, restored and fully rigged in the Bristol dry dock built for its creation, is both exhilarating and frustrating; one longs for motion. As the poet George Herbert noted: 'A great ship asks deep waters.'
It is greatly to the credit of the director and curator of ss Great Britain, Matthew Tanner, his colleagues and trustees, that this is such a vibrant project. We are regularly reminded of the perils of waters, winds and rocks.
Museums of transport are usually at best banal, at worst boring, other than to anoraked aficionados of mechanical minutiae. This place is different. All the technical detail is there but wrapped in a narrative of social history that is intellectual and witty. There is a self-confident and infectious delight in the interpretation.
On 19 July 1843, Prince Albert launched this wonder of engineering. With a screw propeller and a unique iron hull, she was the biggest ship in the world. 'The greatest experiment since the creation,' raved one commentator.
On 19 July 1970, she was towed back to Bristol some 9,000 miles from the Falkland Islands where her rusting hulk had been a warehouse for wool and coal. Thirty-five years later, yet again on 19 July, Great Britain can once more be seen in full glory.
Her nautical career, over nearly a century and a million nautical miles, was a mix of triumph and disaster. As the world's first ocean liner, she crossed the Atlantic in record time but with too few paying passengers.
On her fifth trip she ran aground on the coast of Northern Ireland. She was subsequently used as a clipper, taking emigrants to Australia. She worked as a troop carrier during the Crimean war and the Indian Mutiny and, stripped of her engines, became a 'windjammer' cargo ship before an ill-fated beaching at Port Stanley.
Back home in Bristol, corrosion accelerated. Great Britain was crumbling fast. The solution has been to seal the ship in her dry dock and to build a giant extraction system that keeps humidity below 20 per cent; 'dryer than the Arizona Desert' is the proud boast of the consultants. Glass panels, covered by a thin layer of filtered harbour water, create the appearance of a floating ship.
Far more dramatically, visitors can walk underwater, view the beauty of the caisson and wonder at the ingenuity of the giant screw propeller and rudder.
For me the most moving moment was to stand in front of the great prow, a powerful and beautiful thing. One visitor said, 'Just imagine the bone in her mouth' - the water, he explained, that foams before a moving ship.
There is probably nothing more inaccessible than a ship. But the trust and curators have ensured access to all areas. Visitors in wheelchairs and those with mobility problems can reach everything via a lift cleverly hidden in the funnel.
Handheld guides have been developed for the blind, visually impaired, deaf and hard of hearing visitors. These complement the well designed and easy-to-use personal audio systems available for all visitors.
A visit to Great Britain starts from the Dockyard Museum, whose dull exterior of scruffy brick and corrugated iron belies an imaginative theatrical interior. This is a veritable Tardis of an experience.
The building is packed with touchable artefacts, interactive displays and well-written, well-illustrated information panels. In reverse chronology, the history of the ship is explained with rare panache.
I have always argued that the best museums are those that have a distinct personality. This display has a buzz, a wow factor about it, that puts to shame those many institutions that take safe or predictable interpretative paths.
Visitors can view an authentic ship's biscuit, attempt to steer the ship, to raise the propeller and - joy of joys for this unrepentant child - to sound the original steam whistle.
The information on display is comprehensive and based on documentary research: scholarship without gimmickry. It was good to see an image of Isambard Kingdom other than the one posing against those giant chains of the Great Eastern.
An analysis of the 15,000 or so passengers to Australia reveals gold-diggers, consumptives, missionaries and soldiers as well as the first All England Cricket team to play - successfully - down under. The novelist Anthony Trollope, we learn, wrote his turgid novel Lady Anna onboard.
We can only regret that the voyage was not choppier. And it was intriguing to discover that the Gibbs family, owners of the ship in the late 19th century, built their Bristol mansion on the substantial proceeds of guano. Could there be a more fitting metaphor for capitalism?
A sloping gangway leads to the ship itself. The cramped accommodation for steerage passengers with rations of porridge, pease soup, hard tack and salt pork is compared with the opulence of the first-class dining salon.
A line painted on the top deck kept the hoi polloi away from the privileged. The cabins and surgeon's quarters have full-sized models and smells, including the inevitable outcome of seasickness.
In the galley we learn that the brass pans, spits and bain-maries were used to roast and broil the more than a thousand live sheep, pigs, cattle and poultry that started the voyage. A large porpoise hangs too, ready for slicing. The displays have style.
But the project is far from finished. In future years, the waterfront buildings will need to be recreated. Most excitingly, £600,000 has been raised for a full-scale replica of the ship's engine.
There will again be noise and vibration within the heart of the ship, sounds and sensations to gladden Kipling's engineer McAndrew who hymned the glories of steam 'from coupler-flange to spindle-guide… hear that note? - the rod's return whings glimmerin' through the guides.' I will whing back to Bristol, as should anyone interested in museum excellence.
Peter Lewis is a writer and a past director of Beamish, the North of England Open Air Museum
Project data
Cost: £11.3m
Funders: Heritage Lottery Fund £8.4m, Millennium Commission
Architect: Alec French Partnership
Conservation: EURA Conservation
Contractors: Bluestone, Space Decks, Ove ARUP
