built part of the London sewerage system for Joseph Bazalgette. This was a stretch of the Metropolitan Mid Level Sewer of which started at Kensal Green, passed under Bayswater Road, Oxford Street and Clerkenwell to the River Lea. It was one of the earliest ventures to use steam cranes. The undertaking was considered to have been one of Brassey's most difficult. The sewer is still in operation today. He also worked with Bazalgette to build the Victoria Embankment on the north bank of the River Thames from Westminster Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge. Brassey gave financial help to Brunel to build his ship Leviathan, which was later called Great Eastern and which in 1854 was six times larger than any other vessel in the world. Brassey was a major shareholder in the ship and after Brunel's death, he, together with Gooch and Barber, bought the ship for the purpose of laying the first Transatlantic telegraph cable across the North Atlantic in 1864. Brassey had other ideas which were ahead of his time. He tried to interest the governments of the United Kingdom and Europe in the idea of a tunnel under the English Channel but this came to nothing. He also wanted to build a canal through the Isthmus of Darién (now the Isthmus of Panama) but this idea similarly had no success. Working methods In most of Brassey's contracts he worked in partnership with other contractors, in particular with Peto and Betts. The planning of the details of the projects was done by the engineers. Sometimes there would be a consulting engineer and below him another engineer who was in charge of the day-to-day activities. During his career Brassey worked with many engineers, the most illustrious being Robert Stephenson, Joseph Locke and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The day-to-day work was overseen by agents, who managed and controlled the activities of the subcontractors. The actual work was done by labourers, in those days known as navvies, supervised by gangers (or foremen). In the early days the navvies were mainly English and many of them had formerly worked on building the canals. They were later joined by men from Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The number of Irish workers particularly increased following the Great Famine. Brassey paid his navvies and gangers a wage and provided food, clothing, shelter and, in some projects, a lending library. On overseas contracts local labour would be used if