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Breaking Up

At the end of its days, in August 1888, having been used as a fairground and advertising hoarding, the fate of the Great Eastern was sealed when it was sold for scrap. Deconstruction work on the ship started on 1 January 1889, on the banks of the Mersey. Taking the iron hull apart was a matter of brute force, and over the next two years men chiselled, levered and hammered its plates apart until there was nothing left.

The destruction of the ship gave birth to the macabre legend that two skeletons, the remains of a riveter and his bash-boy, were found inside the sealed double bottomed hull. At the time it was thought that perhaps it had been the souls of these poor unfortunates that had cursed the great ship with so much bad luck.