But the _Great Britain_ was to be 322 feet long, with a beam of 50½ feet, and a displacement of 3,618 tons, with a cargo capacity of 1,200 tons, able to carry also 1,000 tons of coal, and 260 passengers. To build such a big lump of a boat as this was to be a very grave undertaking indeed. In fact, no contractor could be found who would undertake the construction of the ship or her engines. She was something out of the unknown; there were no data upon which to base calculations. Brunel, therefore, made out the designs and the Great Western Company with great daring proceeded to lay down plans for building her themselves at Bristol. This was in 1839. It was intended to give her the usual paddle-wheel engines, but the _Archimedes_ arrived at this port, and the success of her screw propulsion caused Brunel to modify his designs so that the _Great Britain_ should become not only the largest iron ship ever built, but the largest screw steamer. It was originally intended to name her the _Mammoth_, but she had better been called the _White Elephant_, for all the use she was afterwards to her owners. Her rig was like nothing afloat, and the vocabulary of nautical terms contains no adequate description. From our illustration it will be seen that she had six masts. On all except the second she carried fore-and-aft canvas, but this second mast carried two yards and square sails. Forward she had a bowsprit and triangular headsails. In sail area alone she carried 1,700 yards of canvas, and in length the hull was 100 feet in excess of the largest line-of-battleship afloat. She was actually floated on July 19th, 1843, but it was not until December of the following year that she was able to enter the river, owing to the delay in the alteration of the dock. In the meantime her engines had been put aboard, and on July 26th, 1845, after trips to London and Liverpool, she left the latter port with sixty passengers, and 600 tons of cargo for the Atlantic run. She arrived in New York after a fifteen days’ passage, with an average speed of 9¼ knots. On the homeward voyage her best day’s run was 287 miles. The illustration facing page 126 is from a model of her six-bladed propeller, with which originally she was fitted; but on one of her voyages she had the misfortune to break this and proceeded to Liverpool under her canvas. A new propeller was then fitted which had but four blades, but later on she again resorted to the original number. She continued her Atlantic voyages until 1846, when she ran ashore off the Irish coast in Dundrum Bay during the month of September, and remained for eleven months exposed to the terrible wintry weather; but Brunel had a wooden breakwater, loaded with stones, constructed round her, and she was eventually re-floated and taken to Liverpool, and though her bottom was naturally considerably damaged, yet the mere fact that she had been able to survive at all showed that confidence might be placed in iron as a material for ship-building.