THE GREAT EASTERN. {From the Saturday Review—September 17.)

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVI, Issue 1274, 29 November 1859, Page 3

THE GREAT EASTERN. {From the Saturday Review— September 17.)

We are saved the trouble of saying that we are not going to prejudge the result of the coroner's inquest on the sufferers by the explosion on board the " Great Eastern?' for there is, in fact, nothing to prejudge. It may be found practicable to fix the neglect on some individual whose business it was to see that the fatal " stand-pipe" connected with the feed-water or boilercasing was not shut off ; and it is quite possible that some emphatic judicial condemnation may be pronounced on the system of husbanding the steam which has recently been adopted in steamers. But this is all that can come of it. Some solitary scapegoat may bear the official stigma of a carelessness which scarcely differs from criminality, and the higher his station and the greater his experience the more serious will become his responsibility But about this we at present know nothing, and perhaps never may know anything ; and the matter can therefore be discussed without the slightest personal reference or allusion. x We criminate nobody, because we know of no personal responsibility. The point, of course, to be urged on the defence in the inquiry is that nobody was responsible ; and this is our point, too. We assume that nobody was directly responsible. We can quite believe that it really was nobody's business to attend to that little stop-cock of two inches diameter. And this is the strange lesspn which the accident reads. The simple fact is that the whole mighty ship — in respects, and cerfcSmly in its own way, (the very proudest triumph of human skill— was absolutely at the mercy of that unknown and contemptible scrap of brass. There was the ship, cost one million, in all its pride and perfection — actually transcending all its own splendid promises, surpassing itself almost — and yet the worm was at the root of the oak. The white ant — it wanted but one — was doing its certain work. It was an entire and perfect success, all but that little atop-

I cock. Here is the majesty and littleness of man — the I slave whispering at the conqueror's ear, the one thing ' not provided against. The lesson is the more impressive the more contemptible is the agent. For want of the one horseshoe-nail in Franklin's apologue, what * rending of kingdoms and dissolution of proud estates follows ! What dire effects from little causes spring 1 ! ' It is as though the whole thing were designed to point the old moral of the fallibility and meanness which ac- , company the highest triumph of all human things. And under another aspect the mode of the accident is curious and striking. The giant Atmodes, whom , we thought we had manacled .and subdued, was his own avenger. The tremendous genie turned round upon his conquoror. Steam, the slave of man, was to show its master the frail condition of its subjugation. That one-idea'd giant, as Coleridge delighted to call it, and which impressed Wordsworth with the notion that it was scarcely possible to see it without attributing to it life and volition — steam, the Frankenstein of man — seemed resolved to show its devilish as well as its godlike nature, and in the very moment of its last and choicest success, to play a trick on the magician who had made, but not quite mastered, the monster. It scarcely wanted this conclusive proof of its capabilities of mischief as well as of diviner loses ; but there was a sort of stem poetical justice in the fact that the "Great Eaitsrn" should be the scene of what steam could do for evil as well as for good. And yet, on the whole, intelligence beat the mere material element. The balance of victory was, after all, with the man rather than with his revolted slave. Steam did its worst, but the " Great Eastern" came off triumphant. It is perhaps true, as is boasted, that her real glory is in the way she survived a disaster which would have shattered any other ship to pieces— just as the test of empire is its capability to endure and baffle disaster. Not that all this, or any such consideration, detracts in the least degree from the blame which attaches to the person in charge of the water-casing — if any such person there was — or, still worse, if there were not such personal responsibility, to the lack of common foresight which failed to place the waste-pipe under some definite charge. We may say the same, indeed, of the whole system of water-casing in general. What has happened to the "Great Eastern" is only what is happened daily in the kindred matter of railways. " Incredible negligence, stupidity, or recklessness" is the language in which the accident on the Great Northern, last week, is described; and it seems equally applicable to a casualty by which a man was killed on the Great Western on Tuesday. And this is what, without any coroner's inquest, is on the face of the whole matter of the " Great Eastern" steamship. Nobody seemed to know about the water-casing system, or to be in charge of it ; and, as the whole arrangement for supplying the boilers depended on the freedom of the safety-pipe, or stand-pipe, it is obvious to the merest tyro that the ship's safety rested on this elemental and single point. And yet it was not attended to. Boilers, paddles, screw, engines, were each most perfect and admirable— strength, science, and beauty combined. Nothing could improve upon them. From the very moment, however, of leaving Deptford, the donkey engines — true to their odd name— sullenly and stupidly refused to do their work. This significant hint was apparently lost upon those whom it concerned. The donkeys being sulky, it occurred to the officials to feed the boilers without passing the water through the funnel casing ; and of course it was all right. Of course the water in the jackets would come to no harm, and do no harm. Was there not an escape pipe ? Of course there was ; and of course it was in good order. It was not worth the trouble of looking after it. This is what we mean by incredible negligence, or incredible stupidity — men who are all their lives, and every day and all day long, acquainted with, steam and its horrible and fatal power, not looking to a little matter of this sort ! Nor is this all. Not only was it nobody's business to look to the safety-pipe, but this pipe was the very thing which would seem to have furnished a corpus vtle to experiment upon. It was thought proper to test the strength of the casing by hydraulic pressure at Deptford ; and so, the funnel casing being filled with water, a pretty little neat stop-cock was put to it, and the water sent up with a most scientific and completely successful air-tight plug. So far so good; the casing was quite strong, and, of course, as before, when the plug or stop-cock had done its work, it was removed. Of course it was— who would ask such an absurd question ? But it was not, and hence the "accident J' The water took all the way from Deptford to Hastings to develop itself into the most tremendously powerful force which man's art ever compassed ; steam never had such a chance before ; the natural force which flings up a new cone in a volcano, and just lifts a Cotopan out of the earth, is the only parallel to it ; the pressure and explosive power generated was something stronger than that of gunpowder. Six people are horribly boiled to death, and others are injured for life, and all, it would appear, because the stand-pipe was not in charge even of a single boy. Perhaps we shall be assured that we are wrong in saying that the system of water-casing to the funnels was a mistake ab initio. At the best, however, it^was but an experiment ; and it had been generally disapproved, and, as isjaid, had already been the cause of at least- one serious disaster in a steam-ship. But it was a little bit t>i economy. It saved something in the ♦ cost of producing steam. If you can get your water hot into the pot, it will save some time and expense in boiling it. If this is the rationale of the water-casing, it is a most instructive instance of penny wise and pound foolish— a few sacks of coals saved, wad the whole ship all but blown to atoms, with the possibility of destroying a thousand lives. It is the old story. We are familiar with it in our railway experience. Just a skilling a week saved on a signal-man's wages, and the whole train smashed. Such— as far as wo are at present informed — is the moral of the " Great Eastern" " accident." _