It was quite a remarkable achievement that in 1853 the _Himalaya_ was built at Blackwall for the P. & O. line. Here was an iron vessel of 4690 tons, which succeeded in making a record run to Gibraltar at an average speed of thirteen and a half knots. No wonder that the year after she was built she was purchased by the British Government. And then came that wonder of the world, the historic _Great Eastern_, which was the biggest ship ever built for nearly fifty years, until the White Star _Baltic_ came out in 1905. The _Great Eastern_ is best described as a costly freak, but she shows the marvellous courage and enterprise of the Victorian age. It was Brunel’s idea that a ship should be built so as to carry a very large number of passengers and an enormous cargo all the way to Australia without having to coal anywhere on the voyage. She was to be 679 feet 6 inches long, with 82 feet 8 inches beam, of 18,915 tons, and driven by both paddles and a screw. This five-funnelled, six-masted giantess was built by Scott Russell on the Thames. She began to be built on May 1, 1854, but she was not launched at Millwall until the last day of January 1858, the first attempt to persuade her to enter the water being unsuccessful. As a financial speculation she was a failure. The attempts to launch her and the ensuing delay ran into thousands of pounds, and the company which owned her had to be wound up, but she was sold to a new company for £160,000. She was unfortunately now put on the Atlantic route, where she was a financial failure also; then from 1865 to 1873 she was used in laying the Atlantic submarine telegraph cables, for which she was found suitable, and finally in 1888 she was beached and then broken up. Though in a commercial sense she had never succeeded, the _Great Eastern_ did prove that she was perfectly sound structurally, and never exhibited any signs of weakness in spite of her enormous length. But she was really years before her time.