THE GREAT EASTERN.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 429, 28 October 1875, Page 3

THE GREAT EASTERN.

Mr Henry Lee contributes an interesting paper to Land and Water on a visit lately made to the Great Eastern, which is at present in dock at Milford Haven. The visit was made with a view of favorably inspecting “ an enormous quantity of barnacles and other marine animals” which it was rumored had been found attached to her bottom. So far as barnacles were concerned, there were only traces of a few here and there ; . but almost the whole of the huge hull was clad with an enormous multitude of mussels, clustered together in one dense and continuous deposit, extending over a surface of 52,000 square feet of iron plates, and in some parts the mussels were six inches thick. It was found by careful experiment that the average weight of those on each square foot was from 121 b to 131 b ; therefore the vessel was encumbered with not less than three hundred tons of living marine animals adhering to her—mussels enough, in fact, to load with full cargoes, two ordinary collier brigs ! Although the mere weight of this mass would not, perhaps, much affect the buoyancy of a vessel of 25,000 tons burthen, it will be readily understood that the friction of such a rough, jagged incrustation passing through the water would materially diminish her speed. As these troublesome adherents were scraped off with shovels by workmen employed under contract to remove them, they were carried away by cartloads and boatloads, and buried along the shore of the haven. In some localities they would have been hea tily welcomed by the fishermen as valuable bait. So completely had the mussels taken possession of every inch of plate-surface, to the exclusion of almost every other living thing, that there was nothing fit for exhibition in an aquarium but some “ plumose anemones” (Actinoloba dianthus) of the three varieties —orange, white, and olive —fine groups of which had attached themselves in some places to the outer layer of the crowded bivalves. These were, I found, the “ barnacles” of which I had been told. They were known to those on board the ship as “ Baroda barnacles.” A number of specimens from the bottom of the Great Eastern have been deposited in the Brighton aquarium.