IX 



effect of bringing into view a most pleasing feature of his character ; 

 for while he duly paid up all the calls upon the stake he had in the 

 undertaking, he at the same time refused to accept the professional 

 emolument to which he was entitled. 



His services were in constant demand, in railway contests, before 

 Committees of both Houses of Parliament ; and he was employed to 

 construct the Tuscan portion of the Sardinian railways, as well as to 

 advise upon the Victorian lines in Australia, and the Eastern of 

 Bengal. 



Intimately, however, as the name of Isambard Brunei will ever be 

 connected with the railway epoch in Great Britain, it is probably as 

 the originator of the system of extension of the dimensions of steam- 

 vessels that he will be best known to posterity. 



The * Great Western ' steam-ship was his first innovation on the 

 usual system. In constructing that vessel, which was much larger 

 than any previously built, he had the able assistance of Mr. Paterson, 

 of Bristol, as the shipwright, and of Mr. Joshua Field as the constructor 

 of the engines ; and in spite of adverse anticipations, even among 

 practical men, the most triumphant success crowned his efforts, and 

 demonstrated the correctness of his views. 



His attention was at that time directed to the subject of propul- 

 sion by the screw, a subject on which Mr. F. P. Smith had been 

 long and perseveringly labouring ; and the experiments made by 

 Mr. Brunei, in his voyages on board the 'Archimedes/ convinced 

 him of the practicability of the adaptation of the system to large 

 vessels. He then designed the 'Great Britain/ an iron ship of 

 dimensions far exceeding those of any vessel of its period : that 

 the first essays were not entirely successful must be attributed to 

 the fact of the machinery not having been designed by those whose 

 peculiar study it had been to produce engines of the class required 

 for such vessels. The disaster in Dundrum Bay demonstrated the 

 scientific design and the practical strength of the hull of the ship, 

 and the successful voyages since made have proved the correctness 

 of his original views. He was then appointed the consulting Engineer 

 of the Australian Steam Navigation Company, whom he advised to 

 construct vessels of five thousand tons burthen, to run the entire 

 voyage to Australia without stopping. His counsels were, however, 

 not followed. 



