The tale of the SS Great Eastern is a fascinating part of London’s maritime history, intimately connected with the folklore around engineering triumphs and tragedies of the Victorian era. The SS Great Eastern remains to this day an impressive testament of human ambition and the pursuit of progress. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of the 19th century’s most celebrated engineers, the ship was unsurpassed in her size and technical features. Laid down at the Millwall Iron Works on the Isle of Dogs, east London in 1854, the Great Eastern was intended to carry large numbers of passengers on long voyages without refuelling. However, the ship seemed to be doomed almost from the start. She took an unusually long time to construct, cost far more than originally estimated and Brunel himself died soon after her launch, leading to rumours of a curse. During her launch, accidents occurred that cost several people their lives, and the ship, from then on, was considered ‘bad luck’. Workers even claimed to have witnessed appearances of ‘ghost workers’, long deceased, wandering the decks strangely during quiet night hours, reinforcing the mystique of bad omen. The Great Eastern never achieved commercial success and was sold for scrap in 1888. In the process of dismantling, a skeleton of a worker was discovered lodged in the ship’s hull, which many took as a verification of the long-rumored curse. Although it’s more likely the unfortunate worker was trapped during construction, the story still adds to the ghostly lore of the ship and remains a well-known legend of London’s Docklands.