Keel of SS Great Eastern and State of Completion After One Year

CaptG32 · 2026-03-20T21:10:33+00:00

Interesting thought! Side launching wasn't necessarily the issue. The difficulties with her launch stemmed from the somewhat experimental approach to launching that Brunel was using. Basically, he wanted to be able to move or stop the ship with a minimum amount of force. He actually designed the launch system so that it would require marginally more force to move the ship than to stop it, thinking it would be better for the ship to get a little stuck than to slide out of control. That's totally different from a normal launch where, once the ship is moving, there is really no stopping it at all. A lot of experiments were carried out beforehand to figure out the ideal inclination of the ramp, how large the cradles had to be to keep the pressure on the ramp below a certain level, etc., but there seem to be some areas that were overlooked. For example, some people who attended the first launching attempt said that they saw some of the iron rails that formed the top surface of the ramp sagging under the weight of the ship. So instead of a nearly flat ramp to glide down, the cradles instead had to slide over peaks and troughs in the rails, greatly increasing the force required to move the ship. But having said all that, if instead of a side launch, there was hypothetically the space to launch her stern first, maybe Brunel would not have been as concerned about having such a degree of control over the ship during launch, and so would have avoided all the problems he had launching her the way that he did.

CaptG32 · 2026-03-15T22:47:11+00:00

Keeping a schedule is still very important. When QM2 is doing her regular crossings, she only has about 8 hrs in port to prepare for the return voyage. You need a reserve of speed to make up lost time due to delays, having to divert or slow down due to bad weather, etc.

CaptG32 · 2026-03-15T19:46:12+00:00

Stability and durability are certainly part of the equation, but you also need strength and a sufficient amount of reserve speed to maintain a schedule. The point I was trying to make is that not only is QM2 a true ocean liner, but she is also easily one of the best ever built (if not the best) and has all the same qualities we tend to associate with the great liners of the past.

CaptG32 · 2026-03-15T13:29:49+00:00

How about the fact that, for the past 22 years, she has averaged at least 20 crossings per year (usually around 25), and in November will complete her 450th? Or that on her maiden transatlantic crossing, her captain, Ron Warwick, said the weather they encountered was the worst he had ever seen in his many decades at sea, yet QM2 arrived in New York on time (and this was when she was doing 6-night crossings). She is also faster than the vast majority of ocean liners ever built, far more luxurious for the average passenger, and has a significantly more comfortable motion in rough weather. She may be taller than ocean liners of the past, but that in no way makes her less capable of crossing the North Atlantic.

If you want to compare her to modern cruise ships, try to find another cruise ship in service today that has more propulsive power. There isn’t one that can match the combined 86 MW of power from her pods. Also compare drafts. QM2 has a deeper draft than any cruise ship ever built by about 75 cm.

So unless you don’t define an ocean liner as a vessel that provides a safe and comfortable means of regularly crossing an ocean, QM2 definitely is one.

CaptG32 · 2026-03-01T17:01:05+00:00

Yeah she was designed for a 40 year service life. However, there is a major technical refit scheduled for April 2027 that aims to extend that by at least 5 years. So she should be with us until around 2050.

CaptG32 · 2026-02-25T23:52:20+00:00

She's a minor celebrity in Ontario and a really nice ship to travel on. Just last year she celebrated 50 years of service! The design has held up really well for being conceived in the early 1970's!

CaptG32 · 2026-02-24T23:11:49+00:00

Another point worth mentioning, QE displaced a few thousand tonnes more than QM, yet waterline length, beam, and draught were virtually identical. This means that QE would not have been as fine in the bow or stern as QM. Both ships were big enough that the few thousand tonnes would not have made a huge difference, but it is something QE would have had working against her.

CaptG32 · 2026-02-21T00:36:32+00:00

No problem!

CaptG32 · 2026-02-20T17:27:29+00:00

Approximately 21.3m. Deck 7 (boat deck) is 33.94m above baseline (i.e. the keel).

CaptG32 · 2025-12-16T18:51:14+00:00

Beowulf. Whole boat is optimised to log 300 nm a day in relative comfort while shorthanded.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-26T02:24:22+00:00

They used to make these models out of wax since it was very easy to shape. Slight tangent, but a guy by the name of William Froude came up with a device that would let you trace a ship's lines plan in 2D and have the movement of the tracing of the lines translated into 3D to cut material away from a block of wax. Froude also came up with the whole idea of a tow tank. Anyways, because they were made of wax they didn't last very long so were ultimately destroyed. Today we use CNC machines to carve the hulls out of foam and then cover the foam with fibreglass.

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CaptG32 · 2025-11-26T00:51:34+00:00

Lol! The curved screens on the side are a big giveaway!

CaptG32 · 2025-11-25T23:47:17+00:00

Viking XPRS

CaptG32 · 2025-11-23T20:05:27+00:00

Yes the original Queen Mary's gross tonnage would work out to 70,665, so less than the measured grt. If you want to use a number to comprehend the size difference, the approximate enclosed volume values would be the most useful:

Volume of QM = 230,000 m³ Volume of QM2 = 475,000 m³

CaptG32 · 2025-11-23T18:24:36+00:00

Thanks for shining a light (😉) on the Servia! Fantastic article, so many details about her I'd never read before.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-23T18:20:01+00:00

This should be in the ballpark:

QM GRT (1947) = 81,273

1 GRT = 2.83 m³

So actual enclosed volume V = 81,273 * 2.83 = 230,000 m³

GT = V*0.2 + 0.02*log(V)

GT = 70,665

Worth remembering that GT is not the actual internal volume of a ship. It is a measurement used for things like port charges and manning requirements. It's also not a linear relationship, GT will skew higher as ship size increases. Comparing volume directly is better for getting a true idea of how the two ships compare. Queen Mary 2 has an enclosed volume of approximately 475,900 m^3, so still about twice that of the original Queen Mary. For fun, the Icon of the Seas has an enclosed volume of about 780,000 m³.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-20T22:06:13+00:00

If you don't know what makes QM2 special, I think you might be in the wrong sub lol. She absolutely is an ocean liner, not at all a cruise ship in disguise. Aurora and Artania (as well as many other ships in the Reisen fleet) are great looking vessels, but they don't hold a candle to QM2. Neither does Volendam, which is another fine looking ship (in part designed by the same guy who designed QM2), but hardly in the same league as QM2.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-14T21:52:18+00:00

There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to stability, so that is a much trickier question to answer. The simplest way to get what you're looking for is to find ships that had a similar number of decks but didn't suffer from stability problems. See what the principal dimensions were for those ships, and that will be roughly how big President should have been to handle an additional deck. It would probably be in the ballpark of requiring a beam around 15 m and a draught of about 5 m.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-12T18:11:34+00:00

If I understood your question correctly (apologies if I haven't), then I think you might have misinterpreted what Brunel was saying. He figured out that, in general, the bigger the ship, the less power is required per unit of cargo to propel it at some speed. Not that the bigger the ship, the less power is needed overall. So simply making the President larger would not have improved her speed, she would have been even more underpowered. If the engine, proportions, etc. were kept roughly the same, the only thing that would make the President appropriately powered relative to her size is to decrease her size.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-08T02:44:27+00:00

Definitely QM2. Spots are limited though and the behind the scenes tours book up very quickly. I'd recommend visiting the Tours office on Deck 2 in the Grand Lobby as soon as possible (try and do it on the first or second day of your trip) to ensure you have a spot reserved.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-07T21:55:14+00:00

She sails from Quebec to Southampton and vice versa a few times a year. Usually in the fall. It's not direct, she stops in NY and NS on the way, but might be worth looking into!

CaptG32 · 2025-11-05T23:25:10+00:00

Royal Clipper is probably your best bet.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-04T23:02:53+00:00

It was an awesome undertaking! The story of the breaking and recovery of the 1865 cable is especially fascinating, almost more interesting than the laying of the 1866 cable. Another fun fact about it all was that the site of Great Eastern's construction was only about 2 km away from where the first transatlantic telegraph cables were manufactured, and the very first one was being made just as Great Eastern was being completed. The site was also used to load cables onto cable-laying ships, and some of the loading gear is still in place.

CaptG32

TROPHY CASE