The Great Eastern's Log

Book excerpt: William A. Wallace, executive officer on the famous SS Great Eastern, gives a fascinating account of the vessel's first voyage to North America in 1860. Believing the Great Eastern to have enlisted the sympathy of the British public generally; and I may say of the whole civilized world; I think it not out of place, on the satisfactory completion of her first voyage across the Atlantic, to publish a brief, but plain and unvarnished account of her doings; and the fact of my having had the honour of assisting in the navigation of this noble specimen of naval architecture to the shores of the New World and back to the Old Country, will, I trust, be a sufficient excuse for my presumption. Reprint of the original edition from 1860.