January 2023 Speaker
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the son of Marc Brunel a French engineer who fled Paris in 1793 after having met Sophia Kingdom, whom he married and they came to England in 1799 and settled in Portsmouth where Isambard was born on 9th April 1806. Isambard was educated in a convent in France, when his father Marc went to work in America and his mother took him back to France in his younger life.
In 1799 Marc returned to England and worked for the British Navy at Portsea near Portsmouth.
Isambard returned to England in the early 1830s and went to work for his father. Brunel’s first notable achievement was the part he played with his father in planning the Thames Tunnel from Rotherhithe to Wapping, completed in 1843. Brunel’s designs also won the competition for the Clifton Suspension Bridge across the River Avon.
He was then involved with the construction of a network of tunnels, bridges and viaducts for the Great Western Railway and in 1833 he became their chief engineer.
While working on the line from Swindon to Gloucester and South Wales he devised the combination of a tubular, suspension and truss bridge to cross the river Wye at Chepstow.
Brunel was also responsible for the design of several famous ships. The ‘Great Western’ was the first steamship on the transatlantic service and the ‘Great Britain’ launched in 1843 was the world’s first iron-hulled, screw propeller-driven, steam powered passenger liner. It is now docked in The Great Western Dockyard in Bristol and attracts many visitors. His final ship was the 'Great Eastern', so large that it was years ahead of the time.
At Greenwich Brunel built his ships sideways on as the ships were too long to be launched end on into the Thames. Many men had to control the heavy boat as it slid sideways into the Thames with brake levers. Remains of the Brunel platforms are still visible on Google maps.
Another fascinating topic was the Box Tunnel at Corsham between Chippenham and Bath in Wiltshire. Brunel designed the positioning of this tunnel so that the rising sun shone through the tunnel on his birthday 9th April. Engineers have tested this theory out and agree it is correct. Hence the saying ‘Light at the end of the tunnel’.
All the men wore Top Hats at that time and a comment from one of our members said that one of his ancestors was saved from death by his Top Hat which stopped a piece of a building from landing on his head!