Brunel and his family - by Sue Purkiss

I've mentioned before that I volunteer on the SS Great Britain, which sits in the dry dock where it was originally built on Bristol Harbourside. (I've also written a children's book set on the ship, Emily's Surprising Voyage.) I was there the other day, and spent part of the afternoon in one of my favourite places there, in the new museum called Being Brunel, which is about the man himself and all the other projects he worked on apart from the beautiful ship.

Part of the Duke Street Office

I was in the replica of Brunel's office in Duke Street, London - he lived in London, though he had a close association with Bristol since he came to recuperate there after a serious accident in the Rotherhithe Tunnel, which he and his father Marc were constructing beneath the Thames. Never one to be idle, he became aware of a competition to design a suspension bridge to cross the Avon Gorge - and then later, decided to tender for the new railway line to be built from London to Bristol. Then after that, he decided, with typical panache, that the next step was a passenger ship to cross the Atlantic, so that people could travel from London all the way through to New York. So he built first the Great Western, a paddle steamer - and then the immensely innovative Great Britain, noted for being built of iron, for running on steam as well as sail, for being driven by a propellor rather than a paddle wheel - and of course for its size.

The Duke Street office is a large and pleasant room. The window looks out on St James's Park. It is lined with wooden panelling, and there are, from memory, two large desks. On one of them Brunel's cigar sits ready for him to pick it up - he was an inveterate smoker, getting through more than forty a day. Letters and other papers are scattered over the desk. In one corner is a comfortable armchair, with a glass of sherry on the table beside it. On a shelf is a model of a machine which his father, another engineer, had designed to facilitate the production of the wooden blocks required to operate sails. Family was very important to Brunel, and his father was a great influence.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

It feels as if he has just gone out of the room, and might wander back in at any minute. He feels very close. Mind you, if he did appear, it could well be very disconcerting (apart from for the obvious reasons). He was an impatient man who could be irascible: one of my favourite quotes is something he wrote to an associate whose work he deemed to be inadequate: "You have wasted more of my time than your whole life is worth!" He drove himself mercilessly, and he expected similar dedication from others. Probably he sensed, towards the end of his life, that his time was unusually limited: he died when he was only fifty three.

I'm very interested in the extent to which history is affected by charismatic individuals. That was partly why I was drawn to King Alfred, about whom I also wrote a book, Warrior King. Certainly, if Brunel had not had the character he did, the Great Britain would not have been built in the way that it was. The fact that it was successfully constructed from steel meant, counterintuitively, that ships could be bigger: there is a line that directly connects the vessels which carry goods around the world today with Brunel's ship. It meant that that they could carry sufficient coal to power steam engines, which would carry them further and faster. (Though at this point in time, as we slowly begin to realise what we are doing to the environment, we may wonder about whether this was or was not 'a good thing'...)

Marc Brunel

But as I chatted to visitors about Sir Marc's machine, and about how different in character the two of them - both brilliant engineers - were, I realised that my interest in the Brunels is not just down to their engineering achievements. I'm interested in the family, and I'd like to know more about it. In his portraits, Sir Marc looks like a much more genial character than his son was; there's a glint of humour in his eyes. He was French, but was on the wrong side of the Revolution and so had to leave his country, spending some time in America before eventually arriving in Britain, where he was reunited with an English girl, Sophia, whom he had met in France during those turbulent years. Their marriage was evidently a long and very happy one.

Colleagues at the ship, who know far more about engineering than I do (not difficult), think that Marc was actually the more innovative, creative engineer of the two. But he seems to have lacked the drive of his restless son; he had brilliant ideas, but he didn't have a sure hand when it came to making money - and was indeed in a debtors' prison at one stage, where his loyal Sophia joined him.

Sophia Hawes

He was a devoted father. There are letters and diary entries that show this. There's one from his daughter Sophia, where she fondly remembers how her father would take the children for walks and teach them to observe nature, and then go back home and draw it: there's a lovely drawing of a horse which Isambard did at at the age of six. Sophia says wistfully something to the effect that of course Isambard, being a boy, was able to pursue his studies seriously: she, a girl, could only do so up to a point.

Also in Being Brunel there is a replica of Brunel's dining room, where there are three talking portraits. One is of Sophia. She speaks fondly of her brother, to whom she was evidently very close - he spent a great deal of time at the home she shared with her husband, Sir Benjamin Hawes.

I'm intrigued by Sophia, but there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of information available about her. There's even less about the middle child, Emma: and very little about Brunel's wife, Mary. Hm... I wonder...

Brunel: how to 'meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same...'* - by Sue Purkiss

I recently started volunteering on the SS Great Britain, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's famous ship, the first iron ship in the world: once a rusty hulk abandoned in the Falklands, but now a thing of beauty back in Bristol's dry dock, where she was built.

I've been interested in the Great Britain for quite some time. I even wrote a children's book set on the ship, Emily's Surprising Voyage - so I thought I knew a fair bit about it.

But in these few weeks, working with experienced volunteers who've forgotten more about engineering than I'll ever know - one captained two ships in the Royal Navy, for heaven's sake! - I've realised that actually, I know very little - either about the ship, or about the man. I'm sure I'll come back to both in future posts, but there's something in particular that has struck me as I've listened, looked, read and learned.

It's this.

Brunel was in his time, and still is, famous for being as an innovative and incredibly successful engineer. His works are all around us: the Great Western Railway, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Paddington Station, the Great Britain - and there are lots more besides, both in this country and abroad. He worked at an astonishing rate, firing off ideas, eagerly taking on challenges and responsibilities that would have daunted most people. His statues are all around us too: instantly recognisable with his cigar, his stovepipe hat, and that slightly pudgy face, he pops up all over the place. In 2002, he came second in a BBC poll to find the people's choice of the greatest Briton.

Yet as I started to  learn more about his career, I was struck not only by how successful he was - but also by how often he encountered failure.

For example:

• His first big project was the Thames Tunnel. This was - still is - a tunnel beneath the Thames, between Rotherhithe and Wapping, designed by Brunel's father, Marc. It was the first tunnel in the world to be built beneath a navigable river. Isambard became the resident engineer when he was only 21. He worked over twenty hours a day, often working alongside the miners who were pushing the tunnel forward, using highly innovative technology designed by the Brunels. It was an extraordinary project which fascinated the public - at one point an elaborate banquet was held in the tunnel, attended by the Duke of Wellington and other dignitaries. But not long after this, water gushed in through a weak point in the river bed. Several men were killed and Isambard himself was badly injured. The tunnel was never used for its intended purpose, though it was a great tourist draw.
  
  
  
• After this, he went to Bristol, recuperating. A competition was taking place to design a bridge to go over the Avon Gorge. The judge was Thomas Telford. Undeterred by the disaster at the tunnel, Isambard entered. He didn't win. But he didn't give up. He somehow persuaded the board that his plan was the best after all - and he got the job. He put heart and soul into designing a beautiful and functional bridge and risked life and limb surveying it.
  
  But it all proved too expensive, and building halted - he was never to see his beloved bridge. It was only finally completed many years later after his death, as a tribute to him from his fellow engineers.
• The Great Britain  herself was built to take large numbers of passengers at a revolutionary speed across the Atlantic. Isambard's vision was that passengers should be able to get on his Great Western Railway (affectionately known as God's Wonderful Railway) in London, alight at Bristol, then get straight onto his glamorous new ship, which would whisk them across the Atlantic to New York. But all did not go smoothly. When he wanted to install a revolutionary screw propellor instead of a paddle wheel, he ran into strong opposition - it would be too expensive, no-one really knew whether it would work, etc etc. But he persisted. The ship was a thing of wonder - but on its fifth voyage, it ran aground in Dundrum Bay on the Irish coast. Another disaster! The cost of refloating and repairing it was ruinous, and it had to be sold at a huge loss - which was when it was fitted out to sail to Australia instead, and began the most successful phase of its long life.

The ship aground in Dundrum Bay

• And then there was the matter of the railway gauge. The railways were in their infancy when Brunel began his career, but others had already made a start in the north of England - and they had chosen a narrow gauge for the lines. Brunel was convinced that a broader gauge would make for a smoother ride, and would also have advantages in terms of the design of the engines etc. He was probably right, and broad gauge was used in other parts of the world - but in Britain, the decision went against him, and all our railways now are narrow gauge. (This is why there is so much space between the platforms at Bath Station, for example: it was designed for broad gauge

So, famous and successful and in demand as he was, all did not go smoothly for Isambard. But what fascinates me is that when something went wrong, he didn't just put his head in his hands and sit around feeling sorry for himself. (Which, I must admit, is my default reaction.) He simply lit another cigar, sat down at his desk, and cogitated until he had figured out a solution.

Or, if a solution wasn't forthcoming or was beyond his control, he accepted reality and moved on to the next thing, and did the very best he could to make a success out of that.

And that, I think, is deeply admirable - and a very useful example to try to follow!

* From 'If'', by Kipling.

Historical Fictions, Fictional Histories - by Katherine Langrish

 

So we were sitting, just us two, tucked into the cosy corner of a pleasant dockside pub in Bristol, looking forward to a good chat over a hot meal before heading out into the frozen grey February air to visit Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s marvellous ship the ss Great Britain. Nothing could have been nicer. Or it would have been, if it hadn’t been for the over-energetic conversation of the three people at the next table: a man, rather full of himself – and two admiring women. The man held forth, the women chipped in, adding supporting anecdotes. Their voices were penetrating. It was impossible to ignore them. We tried to talk between ourselves, but every attempt failed. We were being drowned out.

The man was going on about Iraq and Syria and Jordan and ISIS. After some time he got off the atrocities and moved to the jocular.  ‘… And you know, some people really are called that? Isis - it’s a real name? It’s the name of one of those Egyptian gods? There was this thing in the paper about a baby called Isis, they were wondering if they ought to change her name. And they could, you see, but it would all depend on what her brothers thought. There were three of them, one called Al, one called Kye, and one called Ida.  Ha ha ha!’  Both women laughed heartily. The man leaned back. ‘But that other disaster, the one in Glasgow, the bin lorry that ran away and killed that family. I don’t know what that was all about, the driver says he had a heart attack or something…’

On it went, and on. Ghastly tragedies treated as lunchtime snacks. Our quiet meal was being ruined. D. muttered, ‘It’s like sitting next to a whirlpool, I keep being sucked in sideways.’

‘Maybe we should start a whirlpool of our own,’ I said.

We eyed one another.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Who would have thought they could have kept the old lady locked up in the attic for three years?’

            ‘Terrible,’ I agreed. ‘The family tried to hush it up, but it was a shocking business.’

            ‘And feeding her on nothing but raspberries and brandy, all that time.’

‘To be fair,’ I said, ‘that was all she would eat. She’d insisted on that diet herself. She really could be very difficult.’

‘She was mad, of course.’

‘She was by the end of it.’

‘And then it all came out.’

‘It had to,’ I said, ‘once the neighbours reported the screams. There was money involved, I suppose?’

‘An inheritance,’ he said dourly. ‘All the money from the sheep-frogging empire her great-grandfather established.’

‘Remind me what that was?’

‘They were trying to make woolly jumpers.’

I choked and recovered. ‘No no, that was just an old joke. I’ve remembered about it now.  It was a new technique of twisting wool into a special thread to make the braid, you know, that was used for decorating Army dress uniforms.’

‘Frogging!’ he said, enlightened. ‘Of course!’

‘Yes, for the Hussars and the other regiments. It was a very important business. In the end they were supplying the whole British Army. The family had mills all over Lancashire and Yorkshire. It all started in the 1840’s. Obadiah Blenkinsop was the founder. He was well thought of.’

‘He was a tight-fisted man, a pillar of the Church.’

‘Very moral. He built one of those model villages for his factory hands to live in.’

‘Like Saltaire.’

‘Yes, but this was on the Calder. Unfortunately, he took his obsession with social engineering a little too far –’

‘He wanted to lower birth rates. His employees weren’t allowed more than three children per family.’

‘That’s right. He had little flaps, like cat-flaps, built into the houses so he could spy on his workforce.  They were called Blenkinsop’s Peepholes. Stewards would go the rounds at night to check that no hanky-panky was going on…’

‘If a family had more than three, the spare children would disappear into the mills.’

‘Cruel times.’

‘Fatal. All that dangerous machinery…’

The two women at the next table were still chattering blithely, but I’d noticed that the man had for some time been strangely silent. At this point he pushed back his chair and disappeared to the Gents. When he came back:

‘You’ve heard about the race to register the patent?’ D. asked me.

‘No, tell me!’

‘You see, Brunel had independently come up with an invention very similar to Blenkinsop’s Sheep-Frogger. The two men found out about it over dinner at a London club, and came to a gentleman’s agreement. They were to race one another to London by canal boat, one travelling along the Grand Union Canal, the other down the Kennet and Avon. The finish was the Patent Office at Somerset House on the Strand: whoever got there first would register the patent. It took weeks.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was a very close thing.  Blenkinsop was ahead, but as he was hurrying along the Strand he happened to look back – and there was a tall stovepipe hat, wagging along above the crowds in hot pursuit.’

‘Brunel’s trademark!’

‘Of course. It must have been a bad moment for Blenkinsop. He put on a spurt, but the two arrived almost simultaneously at Somerset House – only to find the gates shut. Neither of them could get in. There’d been a quarantine order slapped on all foreign patents…’

‘Ah,’ I broke in, ‘that must have been in the middle of the Great Tapioca Epidemic of 1842 –’

But we shall never know more. At this point the three people on the table next to us paid up and departed, and we were left alone to laugh. 

Picture credits:

"Bristol MMB 43 SS Great Britain" Photo by mattbuck. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

"Isambard Kingdom Brunel" by Robert Howlett, 1857, Wikimedia Commons