Grayson Perry Art Exhbition

Properly titled Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! and taking place in the Arnolfini, this free exhibition showcased a huge amount of Grayson’s vases, sculptures, tapestries, and other art across three floors. It was wonderful to see so many objects in the flesh that we’d previously admired in some of his TV shows, knowing the meaning behind a lot of them. I was so engrossed I only took a few photos on my phone. If you get a chance to go then you definitely should.

Bristol

Outside the art gallery we were in time for the end of a protest taking place which was a shame as I like to photograph protests, especially for causes I believe in. We crossed over the pedestrian bridge and took a look at the nearby Millenium Square with it’s interesting sculptures and huge, open space.

Bristol Aquarium

From the square we then headed into the Bristol Aquarium past a sculpture with a sign requesting that people not climb on it. Why on earth would I be mentioning a sculpture with a sign requesting people not climb on it? Could it be because of the kids climbing on it while their parents sat facing them and the plainly visible sign from a few metres away smoking cigarettes? Possibly. In the aquarium my camera was spotted and I was told that photographs were permitted but no flash photography was allowed; fortunately, I’m well aware of this restriction and I rarely carry a flash on my camera body anyway. Why am I mentioning this? Could it be because there was an announcement while we were looking around reminding people not to use flash because someone clearly was? Possibly.

Anyway, a very large, well laid-out aquarium with a couple of star exhibits, those being the multitude of pregnant seahorses we saw in a number of tanks and the very active, surprisingly fast-moving (and difficult to photograph in low light) octopus. I took some video on my phone too with limited success but it does get across just how the tentacles move and roll over one another as the creature moves.

The SS Great Britain was originally conceived to be a wooden ship driven by paddlewheels, but a combination of factors led to a couple of design changes. Brunel was overseeing the project in Bristol when he saw an iron-hulled ship dock in the city for the first time and sent associates off to investigate it; their reports of its benefits along with Brunel’s weighty reputation persuaded the financial backers of the ship to accept a switch to using the stronger but lighter iron as the material for the vessel. A second alteration to the original plans occurred when a ship driven by propellers arrived at Bristol and Brunel discovered that the reduced space required (therefore more passengers or cargo) plus greater efficiency that propellers provided over paddlewheels was worth further changes.

It was these changes that we looked at first with our visit to SS Great Britain starting under its iron hull. Fans of painted and rusting metal are now in for a treat.

We quite enjoyed some of the Brunel-stylised signs around the museum and liked the tip of the top hat to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with the dehumidifier names. Those dehumidifiers were a necessary addition after the ship’s recovery and conversion to a museum when the ambient humidity started to cause such damage to the hull that its estimated lifespan was given as only 25 years.

The propellers on the SS Great Britain were replicas of the first set that were found to be terrible. It’s a bold move by the museum curators. Following sea trials the six-bladed design shown below was replaced by a four-bladed one instead. In later life it even went to a three-bladed design too although the ship was always designed to use sails when conditions were favourable instead of or as well as the engines.

The design changes to the SS Great Britain caused delays to her completion – big projects running over initial estimates is just a fact of life – and things were further compounded when she was finally floated out into the harbour; her width and depth required that the lock gates be modified (after many months of wrangling) in order to allow the ship to egress. The first few seasons of sailing were also beset with problems – the ship required even more changes to fix flaws with the design; it rolled, it was slow, blades broke, wear and tear seemed exceedingly high – culminating in the ship running aground off Ireland. Getting her afloat and towed to Liverpool resulted in the ship’s owners – Great Western Steamship Company – running out of money, and SS Great Britain was eventually sold twice, each time with extensive refits and investments in newer technology engines and stabilising features, and wound up being used almost exclusively on the London to Australia route taking emigrants down under and returning with the gold that was attracting a lot of them in the first place. At this time (1850s onwards) SS Great Britain would have carried just over a hundred crew with around five hundred passengers plus cargo.

Along the dock beside the museum ship there was a nice display showing how supplies and personal belongings would have been stored prior to a sailing south. Luggage beside a ship would be something we’d come to see a lot over the years following this visit to Bristol as our own appreciation for hopping aboard a cruise ship would take off later in 2013 on our second ever cruise (which you can read about here, if you’re interested: Crown Princess, Norwegian Fjords).

Inside SS Great Britain was a surprise, and a very pleasant one too. Living in Portsmouth, we’ve visited the Victory and Warrior many times and these are both very functional vessels, and I suppose we expected a little more of the same, not quite twigging that Brunel’s ship in Bristol was for paying passengers. The dining room in particular was quite opulent.

If you’re looking for an odd reason to visit SS Great Britain because all the normal ones just aren’t floating your boat then why not take a pee aboard a piece of history designed by this country’s most famous civil engineer? Yes, the toilets on the museum ship are actually functional, and that was handy because we both needed to go anyway.

SS Great Britain has some decidedly odd decorations on its prow. Your guess is as good as mine as to what they represent; the set square might refer to Brunel’s engineering; the cogs to the machinery parts of the engine; but the rest? If anyone ever moans about the hull art on modern cruise ships then you can always refer them to this nineteenth century steamship and say “Well, yeah, but would you rather have a scythe and bouquet?”

After carrying in excess of thirty thousand passengers during her lifetime the SS Great Britain was converted to a sailing ship in 1882 to begin a new life of transporting coal. Her final voyage came just four years later when a fire broke out aboard and she made for the Falkland Islands for repairs. The Great Britain’s mizzen mast is on display in the islands’ capital and, indeed, we saw it a few years after this when we visited Stanley. Repairs were deemed economically unviable, however, and the ship was used as a floating storage hulk until 1937 when she was towed to Sparrow Cove and scuttled. Donations from philanthropists in 1970 allowed the ship to be re-floated and towed on a pontoon back to the United Kingdom and returned to the state in which you can now see her if you’re ever visiting Bristol.