THE GREAT EASTERN.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVIII, Issue 59, 23 July 1859, Page 4

THE GREAT EASTERN.

[From the New York Times.'] Colonel Fuller, well-known for his connection with the Press in the States, and who is at present on a tour through England, has sent us the following pleasant sketch of a visit he paid to the Great Eastern steamship :—: — "The Great Eastern!" he exclaims, "I have seen her, the architectural wonder! the mechanical monster of the age ! and wandered for hours over her prairie-like decks, and through her mammoth cave-like compartments. But her 'vasty' dimensions baffle description. Like the Falls of Niagara, neither words nor pictures can do justice to the subject. We can only give a few figures of fact, and a few figures of rhetoric, and leave the imagination to conceive and elaborate the sublime idea as best it may. Comparisons may possibly help us a little in attempting to convey some adequate estimate of size and power. The largest ships of the line lying alongside the Great Eastern look like children's toys. She seems like a continent among islands — a leviathan among minnows — a pyramid among pins. She is more than an eighth of a mile long; and over 12,000 tons of iron have been used in her construction ; but will she ever be finished, and when 1 And what then ? These are questions which everybody is asking, and these I propose to answer, so far as I have been able to gain information ; and, fortunately, I have had an admirable opportuuity for 'consulting the authorities.' The ship is now lying at Black wall, opposite Greenwich, lengthwise in the Thames, in the spot where she was anchored on the day of launching. She is not open to public inspection; but Mr. Herbert Ingram, M.P., the proprietor of the Illustrated London News, who is one of the most active directors in the new Great Eastern Company, kindly proposed a visit to the ship, and made up a pleasant party for the purpose. We found Captain Harrison on board, who has lived in the ship for the last three years, and who knows every rib and joint in her anatomy. All the money requisite tor her completion is ready in bank ; and all the contracts for finishing and furnishing will be concluded before the end of the present month. Only forty mechanics are now at work ; but on the Ist of March there will be at least a thousaud — carpenters, painters, riggers, upholsterers, &c. — employed ; and the ship will be ready for sea on the Ist day of July next, when, after showing what she can do in 'a grand excursion,' she will point her mighty prow towards Portland, U.S. The new directors are men of great energy and practical talent. Mr. Ingram and Mr. Campbell, both members of Parliament, are investing large amounts of capital in the ship, under the conviction that she will prove a great commercial, as well as mechanical, success. Captain Harrison, after eighteen years of experience as a commander of steam-vessels, has unlimited faith in the speed, safety, and profits of the Great Eastern ; and stakes his hard-earned savings on the result. Of course there are sceptics and croakers who predict all sorts of disasters ; but there never was an enterprise, a reform, or an improvement, that did not have to encounter in the outset the sneers of the envious and the doubts of the incredulous. Franklin was laughed at for attempting to catch the lightning ; and Moore for endeavouring to send it on errands, Fifty-six years ago, when William Symington made the first successful experiment in steam navigation by sending the little Charlotte Dundas from the port of Duudas to Glasgow, a distance of nineteen miles and a-half in six hours, all the world wondered and doubted. Five years afterwards, when Robert Fulton, who had made a trip on the canal in Symington's boat, launched the Clerimont on the North River, all the old fogies of the city assembled at the Battery to witness the grand failure, and to pronounce the oracular ' I told you so.' In the year 1819, when the Savannah, a sort of mongrel, half-steamer, half-sailor, left New York for Liverpool, many were the lugubrious predictions that she would ' blow up ' before reaching port ; and even as recently as 1838, when the Great Western made her first passage across the Atlantic, in spite of scientific theories and the sceptical shrugs of veteran ' salts,' the practicability of ocean steam navigation could hardly be regarded as one of the established facts and 'received opinions' of the world. And now, behold the Great Eastern — the giant oak from the little acorn — the consummate product of half a century ! The Great Eastern will have large and elegant state-rooms for eight hundred first-class passengers, and ample accommodation for thousands of second-class. The number of hands in all departments required to 'work her' will be five hundred. She will have three propelling powers — the paddle, the screw, and the sails. Her speed is a question of lively speculation, and betting on her ' time ' is likely to run as high as at the Epsom races. As there may be no harm in venturing an opinion, without risking a fortune to back it, I will bet a bottle of Longworth's best 'catawba' that the Great Eastern will do the Atlantic inside of eight days; and when the phenomenon reaches port she will almost pay for herself by dividing profits with the railroad companies, who will transport hundreds of thousands of passengers to see the show. Parties are already organizing here to go out to the States on the first trip ; and, if that is successful, she will return crowded with Americans, 'who will find life on board the Great Ship, at least more novel, and certainly not more expensive, than at Newport or Saratoga. She will carry a full cotillion band, a complete printing-office ; and a livery-stable has been suggested. The ship will be brilliantly lighted with gas ; orders will be conveyed by electric telegraph ; and her track across the ocean should be distinctly marked on the charts, so that all other craft may give her as wide a berth as they would a rocky coast with a gale blowing in. And I take the liberty of respectfully suggesting to the British and to the United States Governments, that the Great Eastern should be allowed to send respectively a member to Congress and a member to Parliament. Surely such an institution is as much entitled to representation as the Vanderbilt or the Galway line, both of which have carried their ' members.' The day's journeyings and wanderings over the mountainous, cavernous ship prepares

us to relish a dmuer at the Trafalgar, Greenwich. And such a dinner! Fish, fish, fish, in course after course ; and every dish so different from the preceding one as to create a new appetite. How the palate loves variety ! And the art of tickling it is the great secret of cookery. I thought I had done with fish, and finished everything finny, when on came a sole omelet. ' 0 ye gods and little fishes !' how I pitied poor Apicus, the old Roman gourmet, who never tasted this ; he lived and died too soon ! Sailors, astronomers, clockmakers, and map-makers, may remember Greenwich as the place from which we ' take time' and 'reckon longitude,' vrin'le others may associate it with hospitals, pensioners, Nell Gwynn, Jack Cade, Wf.t Tyler, the birth of kings and queens, and other historical trifles ; but in my fond memory that immortal sole alone shall live, unmixed with baser matters. A pleasant drive to town, and a nice supper at the Reform Club ; but no more eating. There are reminiscences of pleasure too sacred to be disturbed."