Westward Ho!

To Bristol on business today.

After my meetings, I ventured down to the Floating Dock, hoping to visit one of the attractions. As it turned out I was too late to board her; I'll have to return another day. But I did take her photo...

Recent local news reports have been reminding everyone in the West country of the 40th anniversary of the return of Brunel's innovative steamship, the S.S. Great Britain, to Great British shores after decades spent gently decaying aground in the Falklands Islands.

The venerable hulk was brought the thousands of miles home during an eventful and at times perilous voyage on a towed barge. Under the commercial pressure of the offshore oil and gas industries, there are of course numerous purpose built heavy lift vessels that would now handle such a task routinely and with ease; these modern day samsons are designed to submerge under a ship or drilling rig, lift, and transport them around the world's oceans under their own power. Lifting tens of thousands of tonnes, they can transport whole refinery plants and complete sets of container cranes; they would make excellent subjects for blips, if you happen to be at sea as they are passing!

The S.S. Great Britain was towed the last few miles up the Avon river on her own bottom on 5th July 1970, in the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh and, on 19th July 1970, finally dry-docked in the same basin in which she was built. Rather than being launched, she had been floated out of that dock in the presence of Prince Albert on 19th July 1843, exactly 127 years earlier. Though the ship has now been extensively restored, the dock remains dry as the hull still bears the rust scars of her long sojourn in the salty winds of the South Atlantic.

The ship moored alongside her dock is the replacement bus service for those passengers still anxious to make their voyage to the New World.