Hydraulic Ram Used in Launching the Great Eastern Steamship

The apparatus at the center of this photograph—a hydraulic ram, or press—was used to help launch what was at the time the largest ship ever built, SS Great Eastern. Somewhat unfamiliar today, the ram would have been more easily recognizable to viewers in the late 1850s. The construction and launch of the enormous iron steamship (six hundred ninety-two feet in length and weighing 22,500 tons) was a public spectacle and the London Times commissioned the photographer Robert Howlett to document its construction. Once built, the compressive force of the rams moved the massive vessel (the hull of which is discernible at the left edge of the photograph) sideways off the shore and into the River Thames. After the first launch on November 3, 1857, failed, additional and newer rams were brought in and it took almost a full three months before the ship was finally afloat on February 1, 1858.

Howlett’s images achieved wide circulation through a series of engravings published in the The Illustrated Times. Additionally he exhibited some of his prints at the annual exhibition of the Photographic Society of London in 1858 and produced a series of stereographs with George Downes for the London Stereoscopic Company.