Between 1852 and 1875 Brunel's
SS Great Britain often carried more than 600 passengers and crew between Liverpool and Melbourne, Australia. The ship made this journey 32 times. Many Australians have ancestors who arrived on this vessel, perhaps someone in your family was a passenger.
On our recent holiday Mr GeniAus and I traveled to Briston to visit the restored ship and associated exhibits in its dry dock at
The Great Western Dockyard. As seasoned travellers we have visited many tourist sites, we found this to be a highlight of our recent 7 week journey.
Although we visited in the high season in British school holidays there was plenty of space to walk around the museum and ship. We may have been lucky but we found a parking spot in the adjacent car park and after our visit we had a tasty sandwich in a cafe on the site. The less said about Bristol's peak hour traffic as we left the city on a Friday afternoon the better!
We learnt so much about ships, immigration and the difficult journeys our ancestors made to move to their new homes in the southern hemisphere. We both found this visit utterly fascinating and would recommend to highly to anyone visiting the UK. If your ancestors travelled on the ship it is a must.
Of course we took a few photos.
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| The horses came too |
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| Livestock on deck |
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| A visit to the doctor |
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| The Head |
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| One of the more spacious cabins! |
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| Kitchen |
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| Little Bourke Street - Immigrant accomodation in steerage |
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| View from below |
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| GeniAus at the helm |
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