Note 18 — Chapter I · EARLY LIFE. A.D. 1806—1828.

Sir Isambard’s journal of this eventful night consists—as he was not himself present—of Mr. Beamish’s journal, with a few words in warm commendation of that gentleman’s ‘judgment, coolness, and courage,’ followed by observations upon the stability of the shield. He then gives a statement made by Mr. Gravatt, and taken down in shorthand. No extracts are given in the text from Mr. Beamish’s narrative, as he has already inserted it in a condensed form in his Life of Sir Isambard Brunel, pp. 244-248.