SS Great Britain

As museums go, the SS Great Britain is probably the best I have seen for years. After buying tickets and having a brief poke around when an old school friend visited Bristol a month or so ago, we decided to look around properly the weekend before last.

It's magnificent, and makes one proud to live in Bristol. It's the hulk of the 1839-built vessel, fully restored to a passenger vessel, with working (model) engines and many details restored or replaced. She's nearly 200 years old, now: the first modern ship, built of iron and driven by steam and screws. To think that for three years I lived in a house overlooking her without a true appreciation of her place in history. The masts are as thick as I am, the plates of her sides 2cm thick but rusted through to air in many places where the restorers haven't worked.

The passenger accommodation is also restored, from the bijou "staterooms" with just two bunks and a basin plus two feet of floor-space, to the steerage dormitories where the plebs packed themselves in; they are all seemingly authentic. But the bunks are so small! Not only are they short, too short for even an average size chap like me, but they are narrow, too. I don't think that my shoulders would fit between the barge-boards that stopped the passengers from rolling out in heavy weather.

Then there's the galley, the animal houses, the latrines, the engine room, the staterooms........

I can't say more than this - just go to see her.


:-)