High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! SS Great Britain is a museum ship and former passenger steamship, advanced for her time. She was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Steamship Company`s transatlantic service between Bristol and New York. While other ships had been built of iron or equipped with a screw propeller, Great Britain was the first to combine these features in a large ocean-going ship. She was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic, which she did in 1845, in the time of 14 days.