4" x 3-3/8"
Refrigerator photo magnet featuring an 1860 broadside advertising the maiden voyage of the Great Eastern steamship, captained by Commander John Vine Hall. From its aborted launch in 1858 until 1899, 10 years after it was scrapped, it was the world's largest steamship.

The Great Eastern was originally known as the Leviathan. The ship's history is a long list of problems and failures. It's most productive years were in laying telegraph cable from 1865-74. The Atlantic Cable was laid by the crew of the Great Eastern, in 1866. The market for passenger fares was not large enough for ships with the Great Eastern's capacity (4,000) and it's brief use for that purpose was in 1867 when France chartered it to transport Americans to the Paris Exposition. Among those passengers was Jules Verne who in 1874 wrote a book about the voyage, Une Ville Flottante.