Ship Building
Scott Russell moved to Millwall, London in 1844, and organised the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. He worked on the design of yachts, boats, barges and ships, and he was a director of the J Scott Russell & Co. shipbuilding company.
He was held in high regard by Isambard Kingdom Brunel who made him a partner in his project to build the Great Eastern. The project was plagued with a number of problems—Scott Russell was in financial difficulties and the two men disagreed on a number of aspects of the design and construction of the ship. The Great Eastern was eventually launched in 1858.
The American engineer Alexander Lyman Holley befriended Scott Russell and his family on his various visits to London at the time of the construction of Great Eastern. Holley also visited Scott Russell's house in Sydenham. As a result of this, Holley, and his colleague Zerah Colburn, travelled on the maiden voyage of Great Eastern from Southampton to New York in June 1860. Scott Russell's son, Norman, stayed with Holley at his house in Brooklyn — Norman also travelled on the maiden voyage, one voyage that John Scott Russell did not make.
Scott Russell was a better scientist than a businessman and his reputation never fully recovered from his financial irregularities and disputes.
Read more about this topic: John Scott Russell
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