I. F. Tsvetkov

In 1867, Jules Verne and his brother Paul sailed the Atlantic from England to America on board the “Great Eastern.” A masterpiece of a British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunei, the ship had a metallic hull, a total of 5 thousand suare meters of sails, and two steam engines driving the screw and a pair of paddle-wheels. The construction embodied a number of innovative elements, including the fore-and-aft framing structure, double sides, and a cellular double bottom. Over 200 meters long, the vessel could take as many as 4 thousand passengers and up to 12 thousand tons of coal for its engines. The magnificent “Great Eastern” could not fail to make a huge impression on Jules Verne: four years after the voyage, his new novel, La Ville Flottanle [A Floating City], provided a detailed description of the ship, revealing not only the author’s literary talent but his considerable technical competence as well.