unwelcome attention of inventors and promoters; if he was too ill to be at Great George Street they visited him at home in Gloucester Square. In part to defend himself from these intrusions in 1850 he commissioned a 100-ton yacht, calling her Titania. Finding that he had no unwanted visitors when aboard, he referred to her as "the house that has no knocker"; when he went aboard, he seemed to grow younger and would behave like an excited schoolboy. He joined the Royal Yacht Squadron in 1850, becoming its first member not from an upper-class background. Titania missed the 1851 Royal Squadron Cup race, which America won and started the America's Cup challenge, but lost to America in a private race a few days later. A second yacht, also Titania but long and 184 tons, was built in 1852 after the first was destroyed by fire. In 1850, the route for the Norwegian Trunk Railway from Oslo (then Christiania) to Lake Mjøsa was surveyed, and Robert became chief engineer. Bidder stayed on as resident engineer, Robert returning in 1851, 1852 and 1854. In August 1852 Robert travelled to Canada to advise the Grand Trunk Railway on crossing the St Lawrence River at Montreal. The Victoria Bridge had a 6,500-foot-long (2,000-metre-long) tube made up of 25 wrought iron sections, and was to become for a time the longest bridge in the world. In 1853, he was elected a member of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers and in 1854 was elected as one of the institute's vice Presidents. In 1855 Robert was decorated Knight of the Legion of Honour by the Emperor of France. Having served as vice-president of the Institution of Civil Engineers since 1847, he was elected president in 1856, and the following year received an Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law at Oxford along with Brunel and Dr Livingstone. During his life he had become close friends with Brunel and Locke, and in 1857, although weak and ill, he responded to a plea for help from Brunel in launching the SS Great Eastern. Robert fell from the slipway into riverside mud, but continued without an overcoat until the end of his visit. The following day he was confined to his bed for two weeks with bronchitis. In late 1858, Robert sailed with some friends to Alexandria, where he stayed on board Titania or at Shepheard's