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Aboard the ship that launched a thousand ocean liners
BRISTOL, England--Imagine being a wealthy traveler in the early 1840s and thinking about whether to buy a ticket aboard the brand-new SS Great Britain, an iron-hull giant of an ocean liner. It promised a speedy crossing from the U.K. to New York, but to your skeptical eyes, it probably also promised a speedy split in half and an agonizing drowning on the high seas.
That was the dynamic that awaited Isambard Kingdom Brunel's great new ship when it was launched in 1843 by England's Prince Albert. Brunel, a famous engineer responsible for, among other things, the Great … Read more
