Record

Ref No	DM1306/11/1/5/folio 349-351
Title	Letter from Dr C. T. Downing to Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Description	Written from 11 South Parade, Bath. The letter offers Downing's suggestions for moving the Eastern Steam Navigation Company's ship and remembers that is was a suggestion by Brunel several years previously saved what Downing considers to be a valuable life. The letter sets out Downing's understandings of the problems with the launch of the Eastern Steam Navigation Company's ship and his belief that once the motion of the ship is started, then the ship should launch quite smoothly. Downing's suggestion for restarting the movement of the ship is to use, instead of hydraulic jacks and rams, gunpowder; in the hope that successive, regulated and electrically controlled blasts of powder might be sufficient to overcome the inertia of the ship and set it moving, aided by a pulling force from the other side of the river and checked by drums and chains on the land side.
Date	22 December 1857
Format	Manuscript volume
Extent	3 pages
Access Conditions	This material is held at the Brunel Institute - please contact the Brunel Institute to arrange access.

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