BRISTOL, ENGLAND—Last year, during exceptionally low tides at Tyrella Beach in Northern Ireland, a team from the University of Bristol used advanced geophysical techniques to search for the spot where the SS Great Britain was grounded in 1846. Designed by engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the SS Great Britain had been built of iron with a screw propeller for trans-Atlantic voyages and was the longest passenger steamship in the world at the time. On the ship’s fifth voyage to New York, a navigational error resulted in the grounding in Dundrum Bay. The ship was unloaded in order to make it lighter for the salvage operation that lasted for nearly a year. “The results were far better than we could have dreamt of. We actually located a huge doughnut ring of debris that fitted exactly the shape of the ship, and faced the precise direction contemporary accounts said she lay,” said project leader Mark Horton. The team also found a linear feature that probably represents the breakwater built to protect the ship from storms. “The Dundrum Bay incident represented the birth of modern ship salvage methods. Anything that we can learn about how this was done will be immensely valuable to historians of the ship. Because they were able to rescue her in 1847, the ship survives today,” said Joanna Thomas, curator of the SS Great Britain. Some of the original parts of the ship may be found in the debris at the salvage site. To read more about nautical archaeology, see "History's 10 Greatest Wrecks."
