Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (1769–1849)

Marc Brunel was a versatile engineer and inventor who made important innovations in the fields of civil engineering and manufacturing. Born in France, Brunel settled in England, where his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, became the most famous of all Victorian engineers.

Although Marc Brunel grew up in Normandy and served in the French navy, he fled France after the Revolution. He went first to the United States, where he became chief engineer to New York city aged 27. He came to Britain in 1799 with the aim of securing a contract to design the Royal Navy block-making works in the dockyard at Portsmouth, which was needed to manufacture the wooden pulley blocks required by the sailing fleets of the time. With Henry Maudslay he built 45 machines. These could make 130,000 blocks a year: ten times the previous output. The mill was a pioneering example of mass production. Brunel went on to design several sawmills and develop machines for the textiles, printing and boot-making industries among others. Nevertheless, he was imprisoned for debts and was released only after political interventions.

Brunel’s other achievements were in civil engineering. He manufactured in England a suspension bridge designed to withstand hurricanes on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. Several other projects were never completed but he built the first floating landing stage at the port of Liverpool and he was employed to dig a tunnel beneath the tidal estuary of the Thames. The project had already failed under the engineer Richard Trevithick and was declared impractical by the engineer William Jessop. However, Brunel’s proposals were accepted in 1824 and the Thames Tunnel Company was established. Before this, in 1818, Brunel had patented a tunnelling ‘shield’. This was a reinforced shield of cast iron in which miners would dig forwards in separate compartments. The shield was driven forward by jacks and the tunnel was lined in brick. Water broke into the workings several times and progress stopped until government funding was offered in 1834. The tunnel opened to pedestrians in 1843 and became a famous spectacle, visited 2 million times in its first year. It was converted for rail transport in 1869 and continues in use. The pumping engine house and shaft at Rotherhithe are now the Brunel Museum.

The Thames Tunnel proved the concept of tunnels beneath rivers and led to many other examples. Brunel was knighted by Queen Victoria and in France received the Légion d'honneur. His health deteriorated but he continued to help his son Isambard with engineering projects such as the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the Great Eastern steamship until his death at the age of 80.