By the 1890s the manufacture of arms and battleships had become one of our major industries. ibid.
Scottish lowland shipbuilding technology had leapt forward. Steam power was replacing wind power. There were also developments in hull design that would sound the death knell for the Caledonia. The way ships had been built for hundreds of years was about to change. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations
The Great Eastern was the only ship large enough to take the seven thousands tons of cable needed for the extraordinary achievement of laying the first successful transatlantic telegraph in 1866. Mark Williams, More Industrial Revelations s2e8: Heavy Metal
As well as being labour intensive the major problem with steam engines was they made such inefficient use of coal, ships couldn’t carry enough for long journeys. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e8: Steam on the Water, Discovery 2005
The United States showed great interest in Ericsson’s ship ... Jon Ericsson went on to make his fortune in the United States building revolutionary iron-clad warships, designing guns and advancing development of the steam-engine. ibid.
HMS Surprise belongs to the Swiftsure class of submarines. These nuclear-powered subs are equipped with Cruise missiles and were the first British subs to sail under the polar ice-cap. Rory McGrath’s Industrial Revelations s5e5: Best of British Engineering: Ships, Discovery 2008
The Victory was recognised in her day as one of the fastest and most agile, most heavily armed warships on the high seas. ibid.
The era of metal seafaring machines was beginning ... And with the SS Great Britain he [Brunel] planned a new kind of ship to link Britain with its empire and former colonies. Brunel aimed at nothing less than a revolution in seafaring. ibid.
Think of the ultimate icon of art deco and here it is: the Queen Mary. ibid.
This is it: the world’s first fast-slipway lifeboat. ibid.
The Men and the Maggots: Revolution is war. Battleship Potemkin 1925 starring Aleksandr Antonov & Vladimir Barsky & Grigori Aleksandrov & Ivan Bobrov & Mikhail Gomorov & Aleksandr Levshin & N Poltavseva & Konstantin Feldman & Beatrice Vitoldi et al, director Sergei Eisenstein
We the sailors of Potemkin must support our brothers the workers. We must stand in front of the ranks of the revolution. ibid. sailor to sailor
Comrades, the time has come for us to speak out! ibid. sailor
Russian POWs in Japan are fed better. ibid. sailor
Give us this day our daily bread. ibid. inscription on plate
Part Two: Drama in the Harbour. ibid. caption
Fire, you swine! ibid. captain
He who was the first to call for an uprising fell at the hands of a butcher. ibid.
Part Three: A Dead Man Calls for Justice. ibid.
There’s an uprising on the Potemkin. ibid. news
Death to the oppressors! We shall take revenge! ibid. on shore
Eternal glory to those who died for the revolution. ibid. caption
Down with Tsarism! ibid. crowd
The Potemkin prepared to meet the squadron. ibid. caption
Join us! ibid. Potemkin’s message
Brothers! Hurrah! ibid.
What is a ship but a prison? Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
We clear the harbor and the wind catches her sails and my beautiful ship leans over ever so gracefully, and her elegant bow cuts cleanly into the increasing chop of the waves. I take a deep breath and my chest expands and my heart starts thumping so strongly I fear the others might see it beat through the cloth of my jacket. I face the wind and my lips peel back from my teeth in a grin of pure joy. L A Meyer, Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber
Britain’s greatest engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and East London’s shipbuilders created vessels that were bigger, faster and tougher than ever before. Brunel’s Last Launch: A Time Team Special, Channel 4 2011
A hundred and fifty years ago Brunel created a ship five times bigger than anything that had gone before. The most revolutionary vessel the world had ever seen: the SS Great Eastern. ibid.
Launching such a big vessel proved to be a disaster. ibid.
The only option was a relatively untested sideways launch. Nothing on this scale had ever been attempted before. ibid.
Having already built two smaller transatlantic steamships the Great Britain and the Great Western Brunel believed it could be done. ibid.
East London shipbuilding had grown into a vast industry. ibid.
So well-built was the Great Eastern that it apparently took two years to dismantle. ibid.
Three million rivets. ibid.
He [Brunel] was constantly pushing the boundaries of what was possible. ibid.
Human error and muddy conditions had caused one slip to be steeper than the other. The ship’s weight was evenly distributed and it stuck fast. ibid.
Now the sunset breezes shiver,
And she’s fading down the river,
But in England’s song for ever
She’s the Fighting Temeraire. Henry Newbolt, 1897
In November 1872 the Mary Celeste left New York with a cargo bound for Italy. Four weeks later she was found adrift on the high seas. Her crew had vanished without trace. Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious Universe, ITV 1994
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,
Breasting the lofty surge. William Shakespeare, Henry V III Prologue
The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,
The gunner and his mate,
Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margery,
But none of us cared for Kate;
For she had a tongue with a tang,
Would cry for a sailor, ‘Go hang!’
She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch,
Yet a tailor might scratch here where’er she did itch:
Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang. William Shakespeare, ‘The Master, the Swabber’
The Mary Celeste: the greatest mystery of the sea. Discovered adrift in the middle of the ocean. No captain at her helm. No crew on deck. On board no signs of a fight, a valuable cargo intact. She flew no distress signal. Rudderless she wandered the Atlantic. Her tattered sails the only sign of disorder. What had happened to turn the Mary Celeste into a ghost ship? Mystery of the Mary Celeste, 2008
The captain, his wife and two-year-old daughter had simply vanished. So had a seven-man crew. ibid.
5The ship’s lifeboat was never found. Did [Benjamin] Briggs take the ultimate decision and abandon ship? ibid.
The Mary Celeste’s last known position contains a vital clue. She was found in one of the world’s most seismically active areas. ibid.
It was James Winchester, the ship’s principle owner, who first raised the idea that the solution to the mystery lay with cargo ... He believed that an explosion of alcohol vapour in the hull may have forced Captain Briggs to abandon ... The Mary Celeste was carrying 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol. Almost certainly methanol. ibid.
This story that you get just doesn’t make sense. You have a sea-worthy vessel. You have a cargo that’s intact. You have a captain that is a part owner of the ship. He’s got his wife and his small daughter on board the ship. It doesn’t make sense that they would leave the ship when the ship is fine. (Ship & Disappearance) Ted Henke, Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company, Claims Division
A fishing trawler disappeared only to be found mysteriously undamaged at the bottom of the Pacific ... The Marian Ann never arrived ... Before the Marian Ann’s disappearance two other ships went missing. Weird or What? s1e2: Ghost Ship, Discovery 2010
In 2004 several vessels fitted with high-tech communications systems vanished off California. ibid.
In 1985 a cameraman captured footage of a drilling platform in the North Sea being destabilised by methane gas bubbles from the seabed. ibid.
The Mary Celeste … found fully seaworthy and floating unmanned in the Atlantic in 1872. Weird or What? s3e8: Mysterious Vanishings
October 3rd 2010: The world’s latest super-liner the new Queen Elizabeth carves through the Mediterranean. Britain’s Greatest Ships: Queen Elizabeth, 2011
For its newest ship the company turns to Italy. ibid.