The ss Great Britain was the world’s first great passenger liner.

A sailing ship with auxiliary steam engines,

she brought more than 15,000 immigrants from the UK to Australia

in 32 voyages between 1852 and 1875.

It is estimated there are nearly 300,000 descendants of those people in Australia today.

Launch of the ss Great Britain, 19 July 1843

The vessel was designed by the famous British engineer

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–59).

Due to the inclusion of many engineering innovations,

she was one of the most significant ships ever built.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

She was launched at Bristol in 1843 but ran aground on the Irish coast three years later.

However a change of ownership and the discovery of gold in Victoria gave her a new lease on life.

She began her Australia run in 1852, but operations were interrupted twice between 1855 and 1859

when she was requisitioned for troop-carrying during the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny.

The ss Great Britain was sold in 1882 and converted to a cargo carrier.

After suffering storm damage in 1886 she was used as a store ship in

the Falkland Islands until 1937 when she was abandoned as a hulk.

However in 1970 a British team performed the remarkable feat

of recovering the hull and towing it back to Bristol aboard a barge.

Hull of the ss Great Britain returning

from the Falkland Islands

Then began a huge effort to restore and conserve the ship,

a project which cost around A$28m.

The culmination of this immense undertaking was reached when the

ss Great Britain was officially 're-launched' in July 2005.

The ss Great Britain fully restored

and 're-launched', 19 July 2005

Many people in Australia and the UK have an interest in this great ship. Are you are a descendant of a passenger?

Maybe you own a Great Britain artefact handed down from an ancestor.

Perhaps you are interested in maritime history, or in the life of the engineering genius Brunel.

If you would like to know more about the Great Britain, visit the website of The ss Great Britain Trust, Bristol