In 1859 Verne and his friend Aristide Hignard travelled around England and Scotland on what was Verne’s first trip outside France. While in London Verne went to visit the ship-yard where Brunel’s Great Eastern was being fitted out ready for her maiden voyage. Her hull had been launched under difficult circumstances the previous year and the strain of the project is likely to have hastened Brunel’s death. The Great Eastern was a remarkable feat of engineering but ahead of her time and her career was subsequently chequered because she was not commercially viable.

Eight years later, in 1867, Verne and his brother Paul had the pleasure of crossing the Atlantic on the ship, travelling from Liverpool to New York. Some of the events on that journey were later used by Verne in his novel A Floating City, published in 1871. This was the first voyage the Great Eastern had made since being leased to a French company – La Société des Affréteurs du Great Eastern – which wanted to use the ship to bring wealthy Americans across to France to visit the Paris Exhibition. The ship had previously been converted for use in laying a transatlantic communications cable and needed to be refitted to return her to her former state as a passenger liner. Her departure for New York was delayed as the work was behind schedule and the travellers finally set out three days late on 26 March. As the ship made ready to get away, an accident involving the portside anchor left one sailor dead and several injured.

Having made a short stop in Cork, the ship entered the Atlantic where she encountered some of the most ferocious seas Verne, an experienced sailor, had ever experienced. The crossing took 14 days rather than the expected ten but despite the rough weather Verne and his brother enjoyed themselves, fascinated by the workings of the ship – the biggest built to that date – and by the activity of their fellow passengers.

They docked at New York on 9 April, leaving them a week to explore the city and the surrounding area before the return journey. This was Verne’s first and only visit to the USA. The brothers stayed in a hotel on Fifth Avenue, went to a play at the theatre owned by the impresario and circus manager P T Barnum, and took a paddle steamer along the Hudson River to Albany. There they caught a train to Niagara, changing at Rochester and arriving at their destination at two o’clock in the morning – Verne was impressed by the comfort and speed of the train. Verne later described watching the sunset over the famous falls the following evening:

What an effect! What artist could ever depict such a scene, either with pen or paint-brush? For some minutes a moving light appeared on the horizon; it was the headlight of a train crossing the Niagara bridge about two miles away. Here we remained silent and motionless on the top of the tower until midnight, leaning over the waters which possessed such a fascination. Once, when the moon-beams caught the liquid dust at a certain angle, I had a glimpse of a milky band of transparent ribbon trembling in the shadows. It was a lunar rainbow, a pale irradiation of the queen of the night, whose soft light was refracted through the mist of the cataract.

From Niagara the brothers went by train to Buffalo, where they walked alongside a partially frozen Lake Eirie, before returning to New York for a few more hours sightseeing prior to leaving on their voyage home.

Verne’s subsequent novel set in and around the Great Eastern makes for a slightly curious read, as it combines a melodramatic plot line with technical descriptions of maritime engineering. The trip to America also provided Verne with material later used in novels such as Family Without a Name, The Master of the World, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and, of course, Around the World in Eighty Days.

You can read about the building of the Great Eastern on the Brunel 200 website.

You can read more about Brunel and innovations in transport in the readers’ guide.

You can also read an extract from A Floating City in the readers’ guide.