Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a builder of bridges, tunnels, steamships, steam locomotives, railways, and gas engines. He was Briton's most famous engineer, and voted second Greatest Briton (after Winston Churchill) in a BBC poll. Like Churchill, he was also the son of an American. When his massive vessel, the Great Eastern, was launched in January 1858, she was six times larger than anything else afloat, and sometimes called Leviathan or sea monster. The launch site in London is now recognized as the birthplace of modern shipping and is a scheduled ancient monument, and recently nominated as an international civil engineering landmark. Sadly, this monumental enterprise was also Brunel's last spectacular project, and the ship that killed him.