Isambard Kingdom Brunel, 1806-1859

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was an English mechanical and civil engineer who is considered one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history, one of the 19^th century engineering giants, and one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution who changed the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions. Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering.

Brunel’s projects often contained innovative solutions to long-standing engineering problems. During his career he achieved many engineering ‘firsts’, including assisting his father in the building of the first tunnel under a navigable river and the development of SS Great Britain, the first propeller-driven oceangoing iron ship which was, at the time (1843) also the largest ship ever built. He set the standard for a well-built railway, using careful surveys to minimise grades and curves. In 2002 Brunel was placed second in a BBC public poll to determine the 100 Greatest Britons.

Brunel’s unique name is an amalgamation of his parents’ names. He inherited the family name of his father, and his middle name is his mother’s surname. This was a common name construction for the time The name Isambard comes from his father’s preferred given name and is a Norman name of Germanic origin, meaning ‘iron-bright’. A cognate name is the German surname Eisenbarth, which can still be found today among Bavarians and German-Americans.

Brunel worked for several years as an assistant engineer on the project to create a tunnel under the River Thames in London between Rotherhithe and Wapping. This was his father Marc’s most important project. The purpose of the scheme was to provide an alternative river crossing downstream from London Bridge, which had become badly congested by traffic from the populous hinterland on both sides. Mining through London clay and gravel had defeated previous engineers but Marc invented a device called the ‘Great Shield’ for excavating the tunnel safely through the treacherous ground. The shield was designed as a cellular structure of cast iron in which workmen could excavate a small piece of tunnel face at a time. The shield would protect them from any possible collapse of the tunnel roof, and as each section was cleared the cast iron frame could be jacked forward and the brickwork of the tunnel built up behind it. His idea found plenty of wealthy entrepreneurs willing to support it financially and the work which was scheduled to take three years commenced in 1825. Work stopped for seven years after a particularly severe inundation in January 1828 when the young IK Brunel, who had been working under appalling conditions, narrowly escaped with his life.

When the original resident engineer broke down under the strain of the work young Brunel, at the age of just twenty, took over the role. The Thames Tunnel was eventually completed during Marc Brunel’s lifetime in 1843. In 1865 the East London Railway Company purchased the tunnel for £200,000 and four years later the first trains passed through it. Subsequently the tunnel became part of the London Overground system and remains in use today.

Britain has only a few large rivers and thus, until the Industrial Revolution, presented relatively few opportunities (or demands) for bridges of any great ambition. Most of them were based on simple arched designs, and it is broadly true to say until the late 18^th century, bridge building in Britain, at its best, remained a long way short of the achievements of the ancient Romans. The situation began to change in the late 18^th century due to two main factors; the development of new turnpike roads and canals across the landscape and the development of iron as a building material.

Brunel’s role as engineer to the Great Western Railway and its allied companies involved designing and building hundreds of bridges. The construction of railways even more than canals, raised new problems and issues. First there was the overriding need to keep the line as straight and as level as possible, even if this meant raising it on embankments or sinking it in cuttings for mile after mile. Then there was the fact that they were operating in a mature, occupied landscape, already full of roads, canals, navigable rivers and property interest of all kinds. When approaching a sizeable town the engineer was obliged to decide whether to take his line below the streets in cuttings, or over them on viaducts. This explains why railway building involved unprecedented amounts of bridge building and why railways were so expensive.

Brunel is perhaps best remembered for designs for the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. This bridge spans the River Avon 214 metres long and 76 metres high, the longest span in the world at the time of construction.

In 1835, before the Great Western Railway had opened, Brunel proposed extending its transport network by boat from Bristol across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City. The Great Western Steamship Company was formed. It was widely disputed whether it would be commercially viable for a ship powered purely by steam to make such long journeys. Technological developments in the early 1830’s including the invention of the surface condenser, which allowed boilers to run on salt water without stopping to be cleaned – made longer journeys more possible, but it was generally thought that a ship would not be able to carry enough fuel for the trip and have room for a commercial cargo. Brunel developed the theory that the amount a ship could carry increased by a square it its dimensions. This would mean that moving a larger ship would take proportionately less fuel than a smaller ship. To test this theory, Brunel offered his services for free to the Great Western Steamship Company, which appointed him to its building committee and entrusted him with designing its first ship, the Great Western.

When it was built the Great Western was the longest ship in the world at 236ft (72m) with a 250-foot keel. The ship was constructed mainly from wood, but Brunel added bolts and iron diagonal reinforcements to maintain the keel’s strength. In addition to its steam-powered paddle wheels, the ship carried four masts for sails. The Great Western embarked on her maiden voyage from Avonmouth, Bristol to New York on 8 April 1838 with 600 tons of coal, cargo and seven passengers on board. Brunel himself missed the initial crossing having been injured during a fire aboard the ship as she was returning from fitting out in London. As the fire delayed the launch several days, the Great Western missed its opportunity to claim title as the first ship to cross the Atlantic under steam power alone. Even with a four-day start, the competing Sirius arrived only one day earlier and its crew was forced to burn cabin furniture, spare yards and one mast for fuel. In contrast, the Great Western crossing of the Atlantic took 15 days and five hours, and the ship arrived at her destination with a third of its coal still remaining, demonstrating that Brunel’s calculations were correct. The Great Western had proved the viability of commercial transatlantic steamship service, which led the Great Western Steamboat Company to use her in regular service between Bristol and New York from 1838 to 1846. She made 64 crossings, and was the first ship to hold the Blue Riband with a crossing time of 13 days westbound and 12 days 6 hours eastbound. The service was commercially successful enough for a sister ship to be required, which Brunel was asked to design.

Brunel became convinced of the superiority of propeller-driven ships over paddle wheels. He incorporated a large six-bladed propeller into his design for the 322 foot Great Britain which was launched in 1843. Great Britain is considered the first modern ship, being built of metal rather than wood, powered by an engine rather than wind or oars, and driven by propeller rather than paddle wheel. She was the first iron-hulled, propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Her maiden voyage was made in August and September 1845 from Liverpool to New York. In 1846 she was run aground at Dundrum, County Down. She was salvaged and employed in the Australian service. Today, she is fully preserved and open to the public in Bristol.

In 1852 Brunel built a third ship, larger than her predecessors, intended for voyages to India and Australia. The Great Eastern (originally named Leviathan) was cutting-edge technology for her time; almost 700 ft. long, fitted out with the most luxurious appointments, and capable of carrying over 4000 passengers. Great Eastern was designed to cruise non-stop from London to Sydney and back (since engineers of the time misunderstood that Australia had no coal reserves), and she remained the largest ship built until the beginning of the 20^th century. Like many of Brunel’s ambitious projects, the ship soon ran over budget and behind schedule in the face of a series of technical problems. The ship has been portrayed as a white elephant, but it has been argued by David P Billington that in this case Brunel’s failure was principally one of economics – his ships were simply years ahead of their time. His vision and engineering innovations made the building of large-scale propeller-driven, all-metal steamships a practical reality, but the prevailing economic and industrial conditions meant that it would be several decades before transoceanic steamship travel emerged a viable industry. Ultimately the Great Eastern was used as an oceanic telegraph cable-layer, which enabled telecommunication between Europe and North America.

Brunel was born into a turbulent age. His father, Marc Isambard Brunel was born in 1769 at Hacqueville, (between Rouen and Paris), Normandy. A monument to his memory can be found in the village near the church. He had in 1793 narrowly escaped from the clutches of the French revolutionary fury during the Terror; and only managed to do so by fleeing to the newly constituted United States of America. Marc’s early education was at a seminary in Rouen where he became proficient in drawing and mathematics, and learned carpentry. He sketched ships in the local harbour, was tutored on naval matters and in 1786 he became a naval cadet on a French frigate.

While still in France, Marc had met and fallen in love with an English young lady, Sophia Kingdom, caught up in the net of hostility towards all monarchists and foreigners. Sophia was the youngest of sixteen children born to William Kingdom, a naval contractor in Plymouth, but he died when Sophia was still quite young. She had been looked after by a brother, who had unwisely sent her on an educational visit to learn French at this time of political commotion. She managed eventually to escape back to Britain and wait for Marc. His time in America had been spent working on a scheme to link the Hudson River by canal with Lake Champlain, submitting a failed design for the new Capital building in Washington and, after taking American citizenship, becoming Chief Engineer of the city of New York. After six years, in 1799, he arrived in Britain with a brilliant project for the mass-production of rigging blocks for sailing ships.

Marc and Sophia married and settled in Portsmouth to be near the Naval Dockyard where Marc was supervising the process of equipping the ‘Block House’ with his machines. It was here in Portsea, on 9 April 1806, that their third child and only son was born, taking the favoured forename of his father and the maiden name of his mother. His father taught him drawing and observational techniques from the age of four and during this time he also learned fluent French and the basic principles of engineering. He was encouraged to draw interesting buildings and identify any faults in their structures. His father was determined he would have access to the high-quality education he had enjoyed in his own youth in France and so at the age of 14 (1820) the younger Brunel was enrolled first at the College of Caen and then the Lycée Henri IV in Paris. When he was 15, his father, who had accumulated debts of over £5,000, was sent to a debtor’s prison. After three months with no prospect of release, Marc let it be known that he was considering an offer from the Tsar of Russia. In August 1821, facing the prospect of losing a prominent engineer, the government relented and issued Marc £5,000 to clear his debts in exchange for his promise to remain in Britain.

When Brunel had completed his studies at Lycee Henri IV his father had him presented as a candidate at the renowned engineering school Ecole Polytechnique, but as a foreigner he was deemed ineligible for entry. He subsequently studied under the prominent master clockmaker and horologist Abraham Louis Breguet. In late 1822 having completed his apprenticeship, Brunel returned to England. In 1830 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He married Mary Elizabeth Horsley in 1836. She was the eldest daughter of the composer and organist William Horsley. They had three children; Isambard Brunel Junior (1837-1902), Henry Marc Brunel (1842-1903) and Florence Mary Brunel (1847-1876). Henry Marc followed his father and grandfather in becoming a successful civil engineer.

Brunel was fortunate to flourish in the period when Britain was the foremost industrial power in the world, and to be an engineer at a time when good engineering was essential to success in the operation of new industrial enterprises and transport systems. Brunel was British in everything except his name and he appears to have been so regarded by most of his contemporaries. His father, it is true, had been born, bred and educated in France, and could thus have been regarded as genuinely French. Yet even he, after leaving France as a political refugee to go to the United States, had taken American citizenship. He subsequently became a British citizen and loyally supported his adopted state against Napoleonic France. Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, had taken a keen interest in the progress of the Thames tunnel and it was at his suggestion that on 24 March 1841 Marc Brunel was knighted by the queen. Eighteen months later he suffered the first of a series of strokes which curtailed his working life and he died on 12 December 1849. His remains were interred in Kensal Green Cemetery in London. His wife was subsequently interred in the same plot, followed by their son, Isambard, just ten years later.

The vision which drove Brunel to create his superlative works of engineering was articulated in iron and stone; in earthworks and tunnels; and in timber, brick and cement. Many of these works survive and have become the focus of much industrial archaeological attention; as such they are a potent source of inspiration and of evidence about the career of their creator. The incomparable gracefulness of the iron way from Paddington to the west, with its many cuttings and bridges and fine tunnel porticos; and its surviving station buildings at Bristol Temple Meads and elsewhere; Clifton Suspension Bridge, completed as a memorial to him in 1864; and the miraculously preserved hull of the Great Britain stand in silent tributes to the talents of I.K. Brunel. There are statues in London at Temple, Brunel University and Paddington station and in Bristol, Plymouth, Swindon, Milford Haven and Saltash. The Brunel Engine House at Rotherhithe, which once housed the steam engines that powered the tunnel pumps, now houses the Brunel Museum dedicated to the work and lives of Marc and Isambard Brunel. Many of Brunel’s original papers and designs are now held in the Brunel Institute alongside the SS Great Britain, and are freely available for researchers and visitors.

Kathleen Cameron