The Great Eastern.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 11, 19 January 1870, Page 2

The Great Eastern.

The saying that " everything has its use," was never more magnificently illustrated than by the Great Eastern. For years after that giantess was launched with so much difficulty, disaster appeared to dog her. She scalded her stokers, blew up her own cabins, ran aground, failed as a passenger ship, failed as a merchantman, ruined two or three sets of proprietors, and was generally pronounced a colossal mistake. But her day arrived along with submarine telegraphy, and now she has become a sort of terrestrial machine—a ship of the planet—without whose mighty aid it is not possible to carry and lay a deep-sea cable. Since she has thus found out her proper mission, folk have found out also what a splendid piece of shipbivlders' craft the vast vessel is. The Great Eastern is in reality one of the handsomest and handiest seaships afloat, and does all her duty well, whether you load her with an extra 10,000 tons or not. She never pitches, while she rolls but slightly, and in a most stately way, to a heavy cross sea. As she now lies in the Medway, with her tropical suit of bright white paint, and the Indian Telegraph cable on board, she is at last, as her worst calumniators must own, an absolute success. Business, in fact, comes in upon her faster than she can transact it; for, having just laid the French Atlantic cable, she is now off to deposit the Indian line, and she will then return immediately to lower the Malta and Falmouth wires into the sea bottom. Everything points to the fact that, instead of discarding BrunelFs grand lines, we must rather build larger and steadier ships than even the Great Eastern—at the same time constructing docks and ether appliances to match these craft of the future. The great steamship has demonstrated one fact among many others, viz., that we could build an island of iron and wood, and cruise about from latitude to latitude with invalids ; or navigate the ocean with huge and motionless floating hotels, the passengers in which need never know that they are at sea, unless they choose to look out of the upperdeck windows.— English paper.