Few men have rightly earned the title of genius, but one must surely be Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In his short lifetime he pioneered the railways, built bridges, tunnels and termini. He also built three ships - the Great Western, Great Britain and Great Eastern. Each one contributed more to the development of maritime engineering than any other vessel built before or since.

This book tells the story of Brunel and his three ships, from the time that the Great Western developed from a dream to a reality, until the recent years. In 1970 the Great Britain, the only one of the three surviving, was rescued from a windswept cove in the Falkland Islands and brought home to Britain. She was restored in Bristol, in the same dock in which she was built, and she now looks exactly as she did in 1843. There she will stay, a proud example of British engineering in the nineteenth century and a fitting memorial to her brilliant designer.