Seafarers have historically been very superstitious. To attract good luck, sailors often knock on wood or carry protective talismans. Whistling on board is traditionally believed to bring bad luck and is typically avoided. The list of maritime superstitions is extensive, reflecting centuries of seafaring tradition. Many of these beliefs originated in the early days of sailing when mariners relied on omens, symbols, and portents to make sense of the unpredictable nature of life at sea.
No matter what sailors do, however, some ships are simply unlucky—or worse, seemingly cursed. The Mary Celeste and USS William D. Porter are just two examples that come to mind, although they’re far from the only ones. In the spirit of Friday the 13th, I wanted to talk about one of the arguably unluckiest ships in maritime history: the SS Great Eastern.
Designed by one of Victorian Britain’s most celebrated engineers, the Great Eastern was a marvel of its time—an iron giant and the largest ship the world had ever seen. Yet from the very start, the ship seemed doomed to disappointment. Beset by problems and accidents, the Great Eastern quickly gained a reputation for bad luck. Whispers of a riveter’s curse didn’t help. Throughout her troubled career, misfortune seemed to constantly follow the giant ship.
The Great Babe
The Great Eastern was the brainchild of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the preeminent engineer in Victorian Britain. After building the Great Western and Great Britain and revolutionizing steam travel across the Atlantic, he poured his immense talent into creating a ship that would dominate the emigrant trade to Australia. The Great Eastern promised to be unlike any ship the world had ever seen. It would carry 4,000 passengers and 15,000 tons of coal. Its public rooms would redefine seaborne luxury and comfort. It was to be a truly modern marvel.
Brunel nicknamed it his “Great Babe.”
At 18,915 GRT, 692 feet (211 meters) long, 82 feet (25 meters) wide, with a draught of 20 feet (6.1 meters), the Great Eastern was more than twice the size of other ships of her era. It defied imagination. To power such a massive vessel, Brunel used a combination of paddle wheels, a single screw propeller, and auxiliary sail power—an innovative hybrid solution.
Building a Leviathan
Construction began in 1854 at Scott Russell & Co. in Millwall, England. Originally named Leviathan, the ship’s soaring construction costs bankrupted the Eastern Steam Navigation Company before completion. After sitting unfinished for a year, new owners bought her and renamed her Great Eastern. Her all-iron hull featured a pioneering double-skinned design and nineteen watertight compartments, making her one of the safest ships of her era.
Great Eastern’s propulsion system was equally impressive. Five steam engines powered the ship—four drove her 17-meter paddle wheels, and one turned a screw propeller, together generating around 8,000 horsepower. She carried six masts with over 1,600 square meters of sail, but the funnels’ hot exhaust made it unsafe to use the sails while the engines ran.
Anticipation ran high as the Great Eastern’s launch was scheduled for November 3, 1857. The event drew a large and distinguished crowd, eager to see Brunel’s “Great Babe” take to the water. However, the Great Eastern became stuck on her launch rails and wouldn’t budge. Two workers died during the failed launch attempt, and several others suffered injuries. But they weren’t the first casualties—six men had already lost their lives during construction. Whispers soon spread: was the mighty Great Eastern cursed?
In response, Brunel postponed the launch until January 1858, hoping that favorable tides would finally help set his “Great Babe” afloat. After numerous delays, the Great Eastern finally launched on January 31, 1858.
Smoke and Sorrow
On September 7, 1859, the Great Eastern left port to begin her sea trials, attracting a large crowd of spectators. However, just two days later, a catastrophic boiler explosion rocked the ship after someone inadvertently left a valve closed following a pressure test. The blast destroyed the forward funnel, wrecked the Grand Saloon, and killed five crew members. Despite sustaining heavy damage, the Great Eastern managed to stay afloat. An explosion of that magnitude would’ve likely caused any other ship to sink.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel wasn’t aboard the Great Eastern for her sea trials; he’d suffered a stroke a few days before and was in poor health. He received news of the boiler explosion on September 15 and died shortly thereafter. It’s said that the news was simply too much for his ailing body to handle. He’d previously said of the Great Eastern:
I have never embarked on any one thing to which I have so entirely devoted myself, and to which I have devoted so much time, thought and labour, on the success of which I have staked so much reputation.
Maiden Voyage and Early Service
With Brunel gone, it was decided to put the Great Eastern on the transatlantic run. As a result, she would never sail to Australia as originally intended.
After repairs and another change in ownership, Great Eastern left Liverpool on her 11-day maiden voyage on June 17, 1860. She carried 35 paying passengers, eight company officials, and 418 crew. The crossing was smooth, and the ship handled a small gale with ease. She arrived in New York on June 28, damaging part of a wharf while docking, but was welcomed with great fanfare by a fleet of vessels and tens of thousands of spectators nonetheless.
Supposedly, the Great Eastern was plagued by mysterious pounding and banging sounds from deep within her double hull in her early career. In time, rumors spread that a riveter had been accidentally sealed inside during construction and that his restless ghost haunted the ship. As a result, many wondered if this was the cause of the Great Eastern’s earlier mishaps. Indeed, more than a few people seemed to think it possible.
Mishap After Mishap
Unfortunately, these early incidents were only the beginning of the Great Eastern’s misfortunes. Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s “Great Babe” quickly gained a reputation for bad luck.
The Gale’s Wrath
On January 21, 1860, the ship’s master, Captain William Harrison, went ashore at Southampton in a ship’s boat accompanied by nine others, including ship’s purser Ley, and Ley’s 14-year-old son. However, during the boat ride, a sudden gale struck and overturned the vessel. As a result, Captain Harrison, the younger Ley, and Coxswain Charles William Ogden tragically lost their lives. The Indus came to the rescue and saved the boat’s remaining occupants.
Weathering the Storm
In September 1861, just two days out from Liverpool, Great Eastern found itself battling a hurricane. The storm trapped her for three days and caused severe damage: it tore away both paddle wheels, shredded her sails, and bent her rudder to 200 degrees before the ship’s propeller wrecked it completely. American engineer Hamilton Towle, returning from Austria, improvised a steering solution by installing a jury-rigged propeller, allowing the ship to limp toward Ireland under screw power alone. The only fatality happened upon arrival in Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, when the helm’s backspin struck and killed a man.
On the Rocks
In August 1862, SS Great Eastern once again set sail from Liverpool to New York, loaded with 820 passengers and several thousand tons of cargo. Approaching New York, she took a safer route through Long Island Sound to avoid shallow waters near Sandy Hook. But just after midnight near Montauk Point, the ship struck an uncharted underwater rock. The collision ripped a nearly 9-foot-wide (2.7 meter), 82-foot-long (25-meter) gash in the ship’s outer hull.
Thankfully, the inner hull held thanks to the ship’s strong construction. But with no drydock large enough to accommodate her, workers repaired the Great Eastern’s hull inside a cofferdam—an effort that eventually cost $350,000 and delayed her return to Britain by months. Iron shortages due to the ongoing American Civil War also exacerbated the situation.
When the first workmen went below to begin repairs, they reportedly heard banging noises and insisted it was the ghost of the lost riveter. As a result, they refused to return to work. Subsequently, Great Eastern’s master, Captain Walter Paton, took it upon himself to investigate. Eventually, he traced the sound to a loose hawser tapping against the hull. Was this, then, the so-called “lost riveter?”
The Transatlantic Cable
After repairs, the Great Eastern made one last voyage to New York in 1863. Soaring operating costs soon forced her owners to lay her up and sell her at auction The Great Eastern found new life as a cable-laying vessel. Her owners struck deals to rent her out in exchange for stock in telegraph companies—turning a struggling ship into a potentially lucrative investment.
In May 1865, Great Eastern was loaded with 13,950 miles of undersea telegraph cable, converting salons and passenger spaces into massive cable tanks. She set out from Valentia Island, Ireland, steadily laying cable towards Newfoundland. The work progressed smoothly for weeks until, once again, disaster struck. Rough seas and mechanical strain caused the cable to snap and vanish into 2.5 miles of ocean. It was a major setback.
Losing the cable was a serious blow. Retrieving the severed end in the deep Atlantic was an unprecedented challenge at the time, and without it, the entire costly operation risked failure. Unable to recover the line immediately, the Great Eastern’s crew was forced to abandon the effort and return home.
Determined to finish the job, the Great Eastern returned in 1866, now under the command of Captain Robert Halpin, who had served as first officer during the first attempt. Against all odds, Captain Halpin and his crew managed to locate the lost cable end using grappling hooks and specialized gear. This extraordinary feat of deep-sea engineering would have impressed Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The crew spliced the recovered line, resumed work, and successfully completed the connection to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland on July 27, 1866—delivering the first reliable transatlantic telegraph link.
A Strange Afterlife
After her cable-laying career, the Great Eastern resumed her original role as an ocean liner. It failed once again. Left moored in Milford Harbor, she quickly wore out her welcome with the local harbor board, which hoped to develop the area for docks. At one point, local pubs buzzed with talk of filling the enormous ship with gunpowder and blowing her up. Fortunately, dock engineer Frederick Appleby found a use for her hulking frame, building a dock around the ship and using her as a station for driving pylons.
In 1885, the Court of Chancery ordered Great Eastern sold at auction. Bidding started at £10,000 and ended at £26,200, with a city merchant named Mr. Mattos winning the great ship. Over the next few years, Great Eastern led a strange afterlife—serving as a floating concert hall, gymnasium, showboat, and even an advertising billboard off Liverpool and then Dublin.
Misfortune followed Great Eastern once again. At one exhibition appearance in Liverpool in 1886, she managed to severely damage one of her tugs—the tenth ship she would collide with or sink in her unfortunate career.
To the Breakers
Ultimately, in 1888 she was auctioned for scrap at £16,000 and eventually brought to Rock Ferry, part of Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula. But dismantling the Great Eastern proved no easy feat. Her immense size and double hull became a nightmare for the shipbreakers.
It took 18 months to break her up on the banks of the River Mersey. Progress was so slow that frustrated workers—paid by the ton of metal salvaged—went on strike to protest the slow and grueling pace.
In the end, scrapping the Great Eastern turned out to be as financially disastrous as her ill-fated career. The cost of breaking her up exceeded the value of the materials recovered, a final irony for one of history’s most ambitious, unlucky ships.
It’s also worth noting that the breakers found no skeletons whatsoever within the Great Eastern’s double hull.
The Great Babe’s Legacy
Although the Great Eastern’s career was marked by almost chronic misfortune, her story is far from one of simple failure. She was a ship ahead of her time—a bold experiment in an age still learning the limits of iron and steam. In later decades, ships larger than the Great Eastern would sail the seas. The legacy of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his “Great Babe” certainly endures.
The Great Eastern’s innovations paved the way for the great ocean liners that followed, influencing ship design, construction techniques, and more. From her innovative double hull to the sheer scale of her ambition, the Great Eastern proved that the boundaries of engineering could be pushed further than many dared imagine.
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