Plan To Refloat Iron Steamship

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31841, 20 November 1968, Page 7

Plan To Refloat Iron Steamship

(N.Z P.A -Reuter —Copyright) LONDON. The British Government will support a plan to patch up and refloat the world’s first ocean-going iron steamship which has lain wrecked off the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic since 1886.

The organisers of a £150.000 public appeal are hoping to tow back the 3168 ton ship, the Great Britain to Bristol, where she was launched in 1843, and restore her as a museum ship. The Great Britain, the first iron ship to use screw propulsion, was designed by the -nineteenth-century engineer, Isambard Brunel. She took thousands of immigrants to Australia I before being converted into la sailing ship for voyages to | San Francisco. She staggered into Port I Stanley, Falkland Islands, in 1886 after being badly I damaged in a Cape Horn gale. She became a hulk for I storage of wool and coal for 47 years, but is now just a wreck in land-locked SparrowCove, near Stanley. The Under-Secretary of the Navy, Dr David Owen, told Parliament that the British Government would help the salvage venture in any way it could. This would certainly iniclude some assistance from

naval units in the Falklands and an on-the-spot survey by a marine architect, he said. An American committee, interested in acquiring the Great Britain for a museum of famous ships in San Francisco, has agreed to let the British appeal organisers have first chance of salvaging and restoring the vessel. Chilean naval experts have also offered to help Bristol's Brunel Society in the project.