IT MAY be hard to believe but until I moved to the South West and first visited Bristol for the obligatory shopping trip, I had never heard of the SS Great Britain.

I hasten to add that I am French and the legendary ocean liner does not feature heavily on the history syllabus on the continent.

It took me three years but, heavily prompted by my partner to give it a chance (“it’s not just any old boat”) I finally stepped into the ticket office this month.

After a peak underneath the beast of a liner and a close look at its iron hull – the oldest in the world – we headed to the dockyard museum where its tumultuous history from its first voyage to its war days and final rescue and restoration.

Not merely a passenger ship, SS Great Britain enjoyed a bafflingly long and diverse working life from 1845 to 1933 thanks to Brunel’s engineering skills.

In 1886 she was badly damaged in a storm and her ocean-going career came to an end. Bought by the Falklands Islands Company she spent the next 47 years as a floating warehouse.

In 1937, after becoming too unsafe even for this, she was towed to Sparrow Cove, a remote bay near Port William on the Falkland Islands, where she might have been left to rust.

But naval architect Ewan Corlett refused to let her fade away and in 1969 helped organise an audacious rescue mission to bring her home to the UK – an 8,000-mile journey to Bristol.

She arrived on July 19, 1970 – exactly 127 years to the day after her launch in 1843.

This brief timeline and stunning photos of the ship in her various incarnations through the decades was enough to whet our curiosity.

We reached the deck where we were offered ‘passenger experience’ audio guides, recounting the ship’s story through the eyes of first and third class migrants travelling to a new life in Melbourne. Happy to slum it, I picked the third class audio guide. Tempted by the alluring first class, my companion did not follow my lead.

Nothing led us to expect such richly-decorated first class dining room and cabins as we headed down into the belly of the ship (or its insalubrious and cramped third class bunks). From the surgeon’s practice to the kitchen and storage rooms, life on the ship was vividly brought to life. Extracts read out from passenger diaries and letters gave an insight into their journeys to the prosperous life they so longed for.

If I could go back in time I would badger my old self relentlessly until she caved and visited ss Great Britain. I will certainly be back to make up for lost time.

– Marion Sauvebois