My facination with things Brunel grows. This image appeared on the BBCi site this morning, the hulk of the ship which laid the Trans-Atlantic cable, the greatest ship before the Titanic, rotting near Liverpool in 1889.

Apparently the BBC is running a series on great events of the industrial age with an entire show dedicated to the Great Eastern. We'll maybe see it on A&E in 2008.

On the BBC site right now there is a gallery at the link above. At the gallery there the following description of the time of the photo:

At the end of its days, in August 1888, having been used as a fairground and advertising hoarding, the fate of the Great Eastern was sealed when it was sold for scrap. Deconstruction work on the ship started on 1 January 1889, on the banks of the Mersey. Taking the iron hull apart was a matter of brute force, and over the next two years men chiselled, levered and hammered its plates apart until there was nothing left.

My great-grandfather McLeod and others, great-uncles and the more distant, were riveters and other forms of ship builders on the Clyde before WWII so such stuff has always facinated me. My own grandfather fell out with his steel moving brothers when he moved into ship steering gear sales before that war.