East End of London clearance. Industries associated with the sea developed throughout the East End, including rope making and shipbuilding. The former location of roperies can still be identified from their long straight, narrow profile in the modern streets, for instance Ropery Street near Mile End. Shipbuilding was important from the time when Henry VIII caused ships to be built at Rotherhithe as a part of his expansion of the Royal Navy. On 31 January 1858, the largest ship of that time, the SS Great Eastern, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was launched from the yard of Messrs Scott Russell & Co, of Millwall.
Maritime history of the United Kingdom was completed in 1994 and "Endeavour" undertook a voyage to Whitby where she stayed from 1997 to 2003. She is now at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. The SS "Great Britain" was Isambard Kingdom Brunel's second ship design, after a wooden paddle steamer called the SS "Great Western". She was the first steamship to make regular crossings of the Atlantic. This was the first large iron steamship and the first to use a screw propellor. After a long career she was abandoned in the Falkland Islands but was brought back to the drydock in Bristol in which she