CURSED SHIP
The Haunted Steamship Great Eastern
|
Although I'm very fond of ships and the sea, taking a cruise never makes it onto my list of must-dos. After the flurry of send-off there's nothing much to do except eat and sleep. But a voyage aboard the Great Eastern may have been interesting to say the least.
Isambard Brunel's steamship Great Eastern launched onto the Thames River near London in November 1857. At 680 feet in length, she was a monster for her era. It was six times larger than any vessel built before.
Steam powered ships were relatively new inventions and the Great Eastern boasted an amazing engineering feature still in use today. Powered by a pair of massive side paddle wheels, she was given a double iron hull attached to a girder frame. Its construction required millions of hand-driven iron rivets. A 1000 young boys were hired to get the job done. "Bash boys" as they were called, had to be small in order to squeeze inside narrow spaces between the double hulls. There by candlelight in that confined space, these children labored for endless hours. Some never came out, falling to their deaths inside the hulls. When the vessel was dismantled for scrap years later, many skeletal human remains were discovered.
On the day the Great Eastern was to be launched she slipped on her mooring blocks, crushing one worker to death and seriously injuring four others. Instead of floating onto the river, this 12,000 ton vessel instead sank deep in mud. It required three months of hard labor to free Great Eastern. Expenditure for this operation and fitting out of the ship cost Brunel everything he had. He couldn't afford to finish the launching and the ship sat in harbor for nearly a year. Then the Great Ship Company bought her and completed the job.
GHOSTS?
An unknown number of deaths occurred during construction and Great Eastern's ocean-going career. Rumors spread among her crew and beyond that the steamer was haunted. Men who worked aboard complained of eerie hammering sounds constantly rising from far below decks. These noises often woke them from sleep and were loud enough to be heard during storms. It was said the souls of boys who died during construction were still trapped between the hulls.
The Great Eastern is long gone, so there is no way to investigate those rumors. They are now part of the die hard mythology of haunted ships.
|
