Bob Abell’s S.S. Great Eastern
A request from the producers of the BBC series of ‘Coast’ was made to Bob Abell who is well known to modellers and on the Model Boats Website Forum. His superb model of S.S. Great Eastern was needed to recreate the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable by Brunel’s masterpiece in the late summer of 1866.
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SS Great Eastern was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and built by J. Scott Russell & Co. at Millwall on the River Thames and launched in 1858. Filming was at the Hoylake MBC pond on the North Wirral coastline on 22nd August 2011. Both Bob and his brother Geoff attended with the specially modified 1:96 scale model, the aim being to re-enact the laying of the transatlantic cable and then successfully transmitting a signal in morse code from one side of the pond to the other. Preparations on the day and film recording were undertaken in almost perfect weather conditions.
The BBC coast team included their presenter Mark Horton who interviewed Bob and a crew filmed the proceedings and the model on its voyage. Attention then shifted to the beach where the S.S. Great Eastern, accompanied by a brass band playing American and British national anthems complete with flags, marked the occasion of the successful linking of the USA to Great Britain by cable on 1st September 1866.
The Coast team thus re-enacted that historic event with Bob’s model which he had extensively modified enabling a cable to be paid out over the stern of the ship as it sailed across the pond. Mounted on the bows of the model were terminals to connect the morse code destination apparatus.
The voyage across the Hoylake MBC pond was a success and with the cable connected, the word ‘COAST’ in morse code was transmitted to prove it all worked.
(Bob put a tremendous amount of work into the project which has been followed on the Model Boats website forum and he is to be congratulated on positively promoting our hobby to a national TV audience. In due course an article describing how he modified his model of Great Eastern will be published here in Model Boats magazine –Editor)
