England

Here are the exposed leads where the log was connected to the ships electrical system (such as it was).

Here's an alternate shot of the first deck down, looking towards the stern (the other photo was looking forward).

Here's another old-fashioned mannequin display, showing the navigation room.

Brunel's largest and most famous ship was, of course, not the S.S. Great Britain, but the S.S. Great Eastern, which when built in 1859 was the largest in the world, following in the tradition of the Great Britain. However, it was so large that it was very hard to fill it (it could carry up to 4,000 passengers), making it uneconomic. It's most significant achievement was probably the laying of the first successful transatlantic cable in 1866 (although earlier attempts had been made). In spite of its historical significance, however, it was scrapped in 1889. It was so well built that it took until 1890 to finish the scrapping. I was unaware until this trip what parts of it had been saved, and was very surprised to find the whistle displayed in the S.S. Great Britain museum. It's connected to an air compressor, but as anyone familiar with steam power will know, this doesn't properly replicate the sound.

This is what's left of one of the S.S. Great Eastern's funnels. Supposedly it survived because it was used in a factory.

For some odd reason, someone got the idea to preserve this jet engine from the Concorde supersonic transport in the S.S. Great Britain's museum, complete with a video of the Concorde's test flight. The only real connection between the two is that both the S.S. Great Britain and the Concorde were built and tested near Bristol, and Rolls Royce, a contractor that worked on this engine, also helped to build the reproduction engines now in the Great Britain. It might have been just a funding issue. Someone got this engine, and had to find a place to keep it. The display plaque calls the S.S. Great Britain the "Concorde" of its day, but actually the Great Britain, while fast, was not the fastest ship in the world. A better aviation comparison would be with the Airbus A380, as the Great Britain WAS the biggest ship of its day.

These toilets have elaborate enamel work on them, but are interesting more for how modern they look, in spite of the overdone decorations. Obviously, they're original, and quite beat up. I presume they were found in the collapsed decks in 1970. Supposedly, one toilet on the ship was tested at the time and found to still work, although presumably it wasn't either of these.

A much smaller steam-powered vessel in Bristol is the Mayflower, built in May of 1861. To put that in perspective, the U.S. Civil War had only been going on for one month. Britain would side with the Confederacy, at least unofficially, and temporarily. That's a whole story in itself. In spite of its name, though, the Mayflower had no connection to America. More impressive was that it served for 103 years, until 1964!!! It didn't wear out, either. It still runs today, although only for tourists. It wasn't under steam when I was there, but it had run recently. The stern claims it was or is based in Gloucester, probably because it was originally built for the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal. For most of its career, though, it served primarily right here, in the Bristol Channel. In fact, it probably helped to push the S.S. Great Britain at some point. However, the engine was replaced in 1899, soon after it was moved to the Channel, so the engine used today, while old, isn't really a genuine 1861 steam engine.

This was the only generic shot of Bristol that I chose to upload this time. Here you can see the Bristol Channel, some of the boats docked in it, and St. Mary Redcliffe Church, which actually has a higher steeple than the Bristol Cathedral.

I began 2013 with a visit to Wales, as I have for several years, but on this trip I once again had a side trip to Bristol. This was for a vintage bike tour of the city. I know next to nothing about this bike, but it ran very well for something that would be considered primitive today, with for example only one gear.

This was one of the attractions that I liked the most, even if we couldn't go inside. It's a steam-powered pumphouse for the "sluice system" that Isambard Kingdom Brunel developed in 1832 to keep the Bristol Channel and other waterways free of silt. Supposedly, this pump house is occassionally opened to visitors, but not on the day we were there. One mistaken belief about it that gets passed around, though, is that Brunel designed it. That smokestack looks very much like something he would design, but in 1888 he had already been dead 29 years. Even this pumphouse was preceded by another one (now a pub) that only dated back to 1870, so Brunel must have had another means of powering his system. There's more information here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underfall_Yard#Underfall_sluices en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_engine_house,_Bristol_Harbour en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_House,_Bristol The tall ship in the foreground is a replica of the "Matthew," which was supposedly the first British ship to reach North America in 1497. It was under repair here because the pump house is right in the middle of the Underfall shipyard. www.matthewbristol.co.uk/home en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_%28ship%29

Here's another view of the smokestack.

Getting back to genuine Brunel artifacts, here's the Clifton Suspension Bridge again. The weather on this particular day was rainy and gloomy, but I chose to attempt this cameraphone shot anyway.

Marston is a reasonably common, genuine British, pale ale.

Spitfire doesn't date to World War II, but at this point it is at least established. I am getting sick of the "Keep Calm" ripoffs, though, aren't you? That certainly wasn't on the bottle when the Shepard's Neame started producing Spitfire in 1990. The company itself is older than most (surviving, continuously-run) breweries in the world, dating to 1698.

This is Wild Hare Ale, which was one of a number of ale choices available in Bristol Airport. Unfortunately, being an airport, nothing there was cheap, so I only had one. This Wild Hare is brewed by Bath Ales, which distinguishes it from the American ale by the same name, brewed by a company called Shiner.

This was after arrival at St. Pancras International. This station was thoroughly renovated in 2004-2007 to accomodate the Eurostar and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, after many years of Eurostar services using the old South Eastern Railway Mainline from London Waterloo. This renovation received international attention, even in America, as St. Pancras for years had been a very second-rate station traffic-wise, even if the building, trainshed, and hotel frontage were spectacular.

This one of the new London Underground S Stock trains, introduced in 2010. There are two sub-classes of these with numbers, S7 and S8. The S8 Class are actually a bit older, as the S7's weren't introduced until 2012. I'm pretty sure this is an S7, as S8's only work on the Metropolitan Line.