One September afternoon in 1874, Miss Bessie Wright cracked a bottle of champagne across the bow of a new steamer and sent it gliding into the Humber River. Thus, one of the strangest vessels ever to come off a naval architect’s drawing board was launched. S.S. Bessemer Saloon Steamship was the brainchild of little Bessie’sContinue reading “The Short Life of the SS Bessemer – 1875.”
Category Archives: Nautical engineering
Shipping Cleopatra’s Needle
In September 1877, a most unusual-looking vessel left the Egyptian port of Alexandria bound for England. She was the brainchild of engineer John Dixon and had been purpose-built to carry a 200-ton stone obelisk to London. “Cleopatra’s Needle”, as it became known, had been gifted to Great Britain almost sixty years earlier, but until DixonContinue reading “Shipping Cleopatra’s Needle”
Tales from the Quarterdeck 