Stephen Fox (Harper Collins, £25) The 19th-century growth of commercial sea travel between Europe and North America was steered by the canny business acumen (and uncanny luck) of Samuel Cunard, as well as the engineering genius of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and others involved in the development of ocean-going liners.
This book, subtitled Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Samuel Cunard and the Revolutionary World of the Great Atlantic Steamships, describes how, within the space of a few decades, iron replaced timber in the construction of ever larger ships, just as steam usurped sail as a means of propulsion. The driving forces behind such rapid technological change were complex, but principal amongst them was the massive growth in passengers, as thousands of Irish emigrants sought refuge from starvation during the potato famine.
Brunel and Cunard are portrayed as radically different characters. Whilst Cunard was a reticent, careful businessman, innovating and increasing the size of his ships only very gradually, Brunel was a risk-taker, prepared to implement unproven designs on a large scale, and little concerned with cost.
While Brunel, as Fox notes, is the only Victorian engineer who maintains a popular reputation to this day, his ships were not much good. Only the Great Western, the smallest and earliest of the three (and in the design of which he had the least involvement), was a commercial success, and the years of effort he put into the gargantuan white-elephant Great Eastern undoubtedly contributed to his early demise.
The Ocean Railway is meticulously researched, based extensively on primary sources and filled with rich detail and revealing anecdote. Reflecting its subject, it is long and occasionally heavy going, but is ultimately rewarding and leaves one feeling better for having made the journey.
DAVID BOWES
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