“If any body of men have just cause to feel pride in their calling, and in the fruits of their labour, shipbuilders have. If we look at the magnitude of the operations of building, launching, engining, and completing a modern passenger ship of the first rank, and regard the multiplicity of the arrangements and beauty of finish now expected, and then think this structure has to brave the elements, make regular passages, convey thousands of human souls, and tens of thousands of tons of merchandise every year across the ocean, in storm or calm, we cannot but feel that they are occupied in useful human labour. But more than this, there is a public sentiment surrounding ships that no other mechanical structures can command. Beautiful churches, grand buildings, huge structures of all kinds have a certain interest pertaining to them, but it is different in kind from that which surrounds a ship. The former are fixed, immovable, inert; the ship is here to-day and gone to-morrow, building up a history from day to day with a reputation as sensitive as a woman’s to calumny, and like her consequently often a bone of contention as well as an object of admiration.”—_William John._ MODERN SHIPBUILDING. CHAPTER I. RECENT PROGRESS IN STEAMSHIP CONSTRUCTION. The achievements in shipbuilding and marine engineering within recent years may be said to borrow lustre from one particular feat of past times. The _Great Eastern_ undoubtedly furnished, in large measure, the experience that has recently been causing so great a change in the tonnage of our mercantile marine. Commercially, as is well known, that huge vessel—“Brunel’s grand audacity,” she has been called—has all along proved a lamentable failure. It has been stated on good authority that between 1853—the year in which the contract for her was entered into—and the year 1869, no less than one million sterling had been lost upon her by the various proprietors attempting to work her. Financially, indeed, she may be said to have proved the “Devastation” of the mercantile marine. Although at various times in her long life-time she has unquestionably done most useful service in sub-marine cable-laying—service, indeed, which, but for her, could not well have been accomplished—these times of usefulness have been far outbalanced by her long periods of inactivity.