Three things about England intimidate me: roundabouts off the M-4 motorway, pub food that sounds like a personal injury or disease, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
English country roads intensify the driving-on-the-left experience by always favouring the cars coming at you. City streets clog and clench around rows of abandoned vehicles, and roundabouts allow left, right, or no turn signal at all even though everyone must go clockwise. Add in the volume and speed of a motorway, and whirlwinds of metal, glass, and honking horns result.
After a day on English roads, you feel like a drink. But in order to get one, you have to work through a menu that threatens to give you Rumbledethumps, Kedgeree, Spotted Dick, Singin’ Hinnies, Deadman’s Leg, or a Toad in your Hole.
Unsettling for sure.
But I would suffer an advanced case of Spotted Dick and Rumbledethumps while heading counter clockwise on an M-4 roundabout rather than be on the wrong side of the powerhouse that was E.K. Brunel.
But I would suffer an advanced case of Spotted Dick and Rumbledethumps while heading counter clockwise on an M-4 roundabout rather than be on the wrong side of the powerhouse that was E.K. Brunel.
A 19thcentury engineer who died in his early fifties, the energetic Brunel packed an impressive portfolio into his shortened life. He led the design and construction of twenty-five rail lines, a hundred bridges, and three great ships as well as housing developments, churches, and hospitals. His projects included the world’s longest railway tunnel, unique ocean-going vessels, and other record setters. For many, the little man with a big hat personified the productive, building side of the Industrial Revolution.
As someone fascinated by engineering and technology history, I should have seized upon our extended time in South West England this year to learn more about the man and his works.
But the intimidating diversity of his career made any serious study of his life seem like a hopeless enterprise, and I satisfied myself with reading a bit online, taking note of tunnels and turns on the train into Bath, and smiling at the Brunel Pub in Chippenham. I might have limited my Brunel study to this kind of activity had we not resolved to make time for a trip into Bristol.
Many places can and do claim association with the great man and his name. He was born in Portsmouth and studied in France. Swindon celebrates his Great Western Railway with its museum STEAM. London has the Brunel University, and you find a Brunel Bus Station in Slough. But no place has a greater link to the man than Bristol, the base for his liveliest work including the construction of the SS Great Britain,the huge passenger ship that was raised from the seabed near the Falklands, dragged across the ocean, and resurrected over a decade ago to become an award-winning museum on the Bristol waterfront.
The ship would be attraction enough for anyone even mildly interested in its story and the mind behind it. But this year, the draw was magnified by the opening of an adjacent exhibit building named Being Brunel.
Heading into Bristol, I tried hard to see Brunel less as an engineering god and more as a mortal whose life might instruct people like me. I looked at the stream of tracks and the tunnels as technically simple and well-honed components just repeated in volume on the backs of others. But arrival at the Temple Meads train station jerked me back into awareness of Brunel’s unique, creative hand. Though the station that travellers pass through today is the work of others, Brunel’s original with its intricate stone and iron beauty inspired their designs as well as the pens, pencils, and paint of 19thcentury artists.
Knowing the SS Great Britain and Being Brunel could consume all available time, we decided to tour a bit of Bristol first. Michele wanted to explore the St. Nicholas Markets, and I was game. But as we headed up Victoria Street, I insisted on a detour down a laneway to The Seven Stars, a small pub known as the launchpad for the anti-slavery movement in England. Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson stayed there in 1787 while conducting interviews and documenting the horror in papers that would inspire the ultimately successful campaign.
Again, I thought of “the backs of others” and how Brunel’s risks and trials were largely tests of intellect and ego and how his gambles were often with money and lives that were not his own.
The notion of real risk struck me as well after we crossed the river and headed toward the Great Britain. A tall friendly gent intercepted us, and with enthusiasm and the inducement of free entry led us aboard the Matthew, a replica of a 15thcentury sailing ship that I knew about but had not expected to encounter this day.
Our host, a volunteer with the charity that maintains the ship, reminded us that a group of Bristol enthusiasts built this version of the Matthew to celebrate the 500th anniversary of its namesake’s voyage across the Atlantic. An intrepid crew that included a crazy Canadian or two repeated the trip over the ocean to Newfoundland in 1997.
“I can’t think of a worse nightmare,” said Michele, who gets motion sick if she doesn’t face forward on the train or sit in a front seat on the bus.
As I dropped a bill into the collection box and thanked our new friend for his efforts to commemorate our joint history, I looked up and wondered how Brunel and his stomach might do swaying in the crow’s nest bouncing over North Atlantic waves. Once again, I sought to see the engineer’s intimidating achievements with some perspective.
But within minutes, the giant masts and bulk of the SS Great Britain appeared on the waterfront, and I fell back into awe. The ship is the centrepiece, but not the only feature of the museum site which grew in width to match its height as we approached. From the entrance, you pass through a dockyard building that recreates the sights, sounds, and smells of the 19th century and evokes the heavy lifting of iron shipbuilding. With a Visitor’s Pass that reads “Crew Boarding Card,” you climb up to enter the ship and begin a tour that leads through the cabins and promenades on the luxury levels and then down to the cramped darkness of steerage, the dank engine room, and a galley framed by video screens with images of scurrying rats.
The ship and its environs remind you of the hard work, discomfort, and risk encountered by those beyond Brunel who put the vessel into use. But the final two phases of the tour brought me back to my starting point of intimidation.
A unique and memorable part of the SS Great Britain experience comes with the opportunity to go below the water level and inspect the hull up close. You pass under the water but not into it. A huge glass plate surrounds the ship to insulate and protect the rusty underside from further corrosion. But because a shallow layer of water floods the glass plate, the ship seems afloat, and you feel like you are going under the waterline as you enter the space around the rusting hull. From this lower vantage point, the immense size of the project and its design looms over you. The giant propeller, more than anything, reminded me of the vision, skill, and personality of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
The use of a screw-propeller on the ship only came after vigorous and tense debates with investors who favoured the paddle-wheels of the Mississippi riverboat kind. Brunel persisted and won the day having seen a propeller driven boat in action and having conducted his own experiments. Confident and convinced of the technology, he never flinched even though the expense threatened the entire project and even though his original six-blade version had to be replaced with a more effective four-blade type for the ship’s successful run.
The museum recreates that testy debate with investors in a looped video screened for three-dimensional effect and culminates with displays that remind visitors of that long, diverse list of engineering achievements that, in sum, reinforce the image of a confident, capable and larger than life figure behind them. The museum drives home the message with something that is itself larger-than-life. A full colour, eight-metre bust of the great man with his trademark cigar and tall hat. I smiled knowing that Brunel stood about five feet tall when hatless, but again wondered if I could find any way to relate to him and his story.
Like tens of thousands of others, I took a photo of the big head. In fact, I took lots. I have developed the habit of taking many, many digital photos in museums so that I can pass through the exhibits daydreaming and not thinking in a directed way. I check and edit the photos later when I can absorb detail and information with support from the Internet and more time. For this reason, I didn’t notice what is now the part of Being Brunel that haunts me most until later sitting at a restaurant. Stabbing fish and chips and scanning the photos, I saw an image that had to be enlarged. It showed an item that was only a few centimetres in size: it was this phrase from Brunel’s once-locked diary.
“I am always afraid…”
Brunel not only wrote of self doubts and insecurity, but also of the fear that his obsessions and his drive to take on great, unimaginable projects were a function of a kind of madness. The text makes him more human and, paradoxically, a more useful role model.
He encountered many setbacks, insecurities, and disheartening opposition. But these were dwarfed by successes and his capacity to persevere, and as we left Temple Meads on the train back to Chippenham, I thought that there might be a bit of magic in that combination of intimidating self doubt and a little madness.
The following week I called on this formula when I drove away from the Enterprise Car Rental office, clenched my teeth, and headed for the motorway - and then later in a pub when I closed my eyes, pointed at the menu, and ordered lunch.
