Welcome to my new Blog



Welcome to my Blog.
My Blog is mostly about my hobbies, ie Model boats, Cross Stitch, Gardening, Days out and about, Lego Technics and Photography you might recognize the hat rather than me. My models and other hobbies can be found in the Tabs at the top below the header picture.
There will also be entries of days out with my camera, weather permitting of course.

Saturday 7 April 2012

G is for Great Eastern

G in the A_Z challenge is for "Great Eastern" the ship that made history with its revolutionary design it was never a Great commercial success and was plagued with mishaps.
Eventually, it ended its days as a tourist attraction, before being broken up for scrap. 
A sad end for a Great "Wonder of the Industrial World"

Did you know that Isambard Kingdom Brunel's "Great Eastern" was the ship that laid the cable for the first transatlantic telegraph cable!
The main part of to-days blog is to tell you of the model that my Great friend Bob (the builder) constructed:
Its a 7ft plank on frame boat that last August he took to Hoylake for the BBC to film laying the cable from one side of the lake to the other, to represent the ship doing it at the time, this is to be on the television program "Coast" this year.
Bob even took out one of the funnels to fit the cable drum in, same as the real ship.
Bob in his element and the water!

Choppy seas

Mark Horton one of the presenters
The Hoylake members helped out with this JAW'S

Jonathan Hare of the Coast team watches GE make an impressive sail pass 


Bob and his twin brother even got dressed up for the occasion.
Great shame I couldn't be there on the day to make a video, I'll have to wait same as everyone else for the Television program. 

Bob the Builder doing his thing!.
We had a stand at the Ellesmere Port Boat Museum at the beginning of March and there was Great interest  from the other modellers at the show.
Bob with a fellow photographer.
On the stand as well, copies of the three magazines featuring the model.
Pepe there as well on Guard!, "Does he bite? was asked "Only if you touch the model" says I.

Me explaining something, I've learnt a lot myself about the subject.

Ready for the crowds

Duckie the teacher!

See how close to the original he made it!
The masts were named after the days of the week! resting on Sunday of course.


Once the telegraph link had been established, Queen Victoria exchanged congratulations with President Andrew Johnson.

The messages took several hours to cross the ocean. But without the cable, a despatch going in one direction alone would have taken up to 12 days by inland telegraph and steamer.
Click to find out more

Should have been saved same as the Cutty Sark and the other legends of shipping perhaps!, still Bob's got his splendid model to remind us.

That's all folks a Great ship and Great model

6 comments:

  1. Thank you Duckie for your Great tribute to my GE model
    The full story in a nutshell!

    Capt B

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  2. Another excellent A-Z post :)

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  3. Not many commented though hey.

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  4. That might be because they haven't found you..
    John's helping you out on twitter..
    Well written, nice pics. I've never heard of Etherow but went to school in E.Port! Will try and pop by again.

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  5. Hi Lynne, I don't mind really, I write another blog for my Model Boat club and out of 150+ members of which 90% have PCs I rarely get any feedback, I think a lot of the members like to read but are too shy to comment, or don't have enough knowledge of their PCs. There's one good thing though I can please myself what I write hey.

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  6. You'll get a lot of readers and non-comentators. I read your posts and rarely write - and the same thing happens my blog. Just remember, you are more famous than you think !

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