The ship that took the Ashes pioneers to Australia
Brunel’s SS Great Britain ferried the first cricketers Down Under in epic 1861 voyage, writes Scyld Berry
George Anderson spewed his guts out the moment they left Liverpool
It was at sea, not on land, that the longestrunning bilateral contest in international sport began. Anglo-australian cricket started with the SS Great Britain. The first Test matches flowed from there, and from 1882 the Ashes.
“The ship that changed the world” is the sobriquet of the SS Great Britain and, so far as cricket is concerned, it is not hyperbole. It transported the first two English cricket teams to Australia, before the Suez Canal, in 1861 and 1863. Otherwise cricket might never have taken off in Australia, or the rivalry with the mother country.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel had a few teething troubles when building his iron steamship in Bristol in the 1840s, then
it was needed for the Crimean War and the national rebellion in India. When peace came, it settled down to shipping emigrants to Australia, and cricketers. The voyage took 66 days for Heathfield Stephenson’s men in 1861 as they went via Cape Town and had to refuel with coal.
We know more about the second tour because EM Grace, WG’S older brother, was one of the players, the only amateur on the first two tours while the rest were hardened professionals. EM – we can hardly call him Edward – kept a diary on the voyage out, while George Anderson spewed his guts out from the moment they left Liverpool.
EM had the same prodigious appetites as WG, so he was soon complaining about the food. He even kept a bill of fare to show how meagre it was: veal and turkey have been crossed out, leaving only beef (cows were kept on the top deck), mutton, geese, ducks, fowl and chickens, plus ham, pork, tongue and mutton pies – all this before the plum pudding.
EM also complained about the women in first class, where he had his cabin, finding them “plain”.
On deck, between the enormous funnels belching their fumes when the sails were not working sufficiently, was just enough space for deck quoits, long jump and high jump. Below decks, poorer passengers gave birth, cooked, ate, and tried to wash, to the roar of engines.
Cricket was being played in Sydney and Melbourne, and occasionally in country towns, but to no great standard in the 1860s. The English XI overwhelmed their opponents even if there were XVIII or XXII. But one stayed on to coach: Charles Lawrence, of Surrey, who became known as the father of Australian cricket, and organised the first cricket tour of England, in 1868, by indigenous Australians.
Rather like another Bristolian product, Concorde, the SS Great Britain may have been ahead of its time. By the 1880s, its engines had been removed and, as a windjammer or sailing ship, it transported coal. Soon it was a derelict hulk in the Falkland Islands, before being restored to Bristol in 1970.
Cricket’s fortunes went in the opposite direction. EM cannot have had too many complaints about touring Australia because WG led the next one in 1873-74, after refusing the initial offer and holding out for the enormous fee of £1,500, plus all he could eat and drink (vast quantities). The first Test followed in Melbourne in 1877, and the Ashes myth was created at the Oval in 1882.
Two months on board ship: no wonder the English players needed more than a week to find their land legs before their first match. But the chemistry was right: Australians wanted to beat the English at their own game, to show they were not just as good, but better than Poms who had stayed at home.
As for the standard of Australian cricket, Roger Iddison of Yorkshire, one of the original voyagers on the Great Britain, said: “Oi doant think mooch of [the Australians’] play, but they are a wonderful lot of drinking men.”