Cleopatra (ship, 1877)
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The barge Cleopatra was designed exclusively for the transport of one of the two " needles of Cleopatra ", an obelisk , from Egypt to London in 1877/78.
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In 1819, the Egyptian viceroy Mehemed Ali gave Great Britain an almost 22 m high and 180 ton heavy obelisk in recognition of Lord Nelson's victories in the naval battle of Abukir and Sir Ralph Abercromby's in the battle of Alexandria. In the decades that followed, the British government made various fruitless attempts to transport the obelisk to London.
It was not until 1877 that the engineer John Dixon and the wealthy Freemason Sir Erasmus Wilson found themselves ready to tackle the project. Dixon drew up a plan for a 28 meter long cylindrical barge in which the obelisk was to be brought to England by a tug . Wilson contributed around £ 15,000 (about $ 2 million in today's value) to the project.
The sections of the barge were prefabricated in the UK and shipped in parts to Alexandria . On site, the individual parts were put together around the obelisk lying on the beach and the floating body was rolled into the sea. Only then were the rudder, mast and deck structure attached to the hull and the vehicle christened Cleopatra .
On September 21, 1877, the Alexandria Obelisk in Cleopatra began its journey to London, towed by the steam tug Olga . On October 14, 1877, the tow train in the Biscay got into bad weather, whereupon the Olga could no longer safely tow the attachment. A boat with six volunteers (including the tug captain's son) was brought into the water to hide the five-man crew and the skipper of the annex. The boat capsized in the rough sea and all six men drowned. Regardless of this, the Olga sent another boat, whose rescue operation was successful. The towline to the Cleopatra was cut and the barge, which quickly got out of sight, abandoned.
Later, the Glasgow steamer Fitzmaurice sighted Cleopatra, which had apparently remained undamaged, and brought her safely to the northern Spanish port of Ferrol . The Cleopatra was repaired there and picked up on January 15, 1878 by the Anglia steam tug . On January 21, 1878, the tow finally arrived in Gravesend at the Thames estuary . The Cleopatra was dismantled to get to the obelisk and later scrapped. On September 12, 1878, the obelisk was erected in London on the north-west bank of the Thames.