The S.S. Great Britain operated on the Australia route from Bristol or Liverpool to Melbourne for over 20 years from 1852 onwards. A pioneering propellor-driven, iron hulled steamship, the Great Britain was refitted from her transatlantic route to carry a capacity of 730 passengers and around 130 officers and crew, and up to 2,200 tons of cargo on a journey of around 2 months. Over the course of 23 years, the Great Britain carried thousands of emigrants to Australia on 32 round voyages to Melbourne.

The S.S. Great Britain returned to its original dock in Bristol in 1970, having previously been beached in the Falkland Islands for several decades, and after extensive restoration work is now a museum. The museum has extensive records of passenger lists, crew manifests, ships logs and a collection of onboard newspapers and passengers' diaries, all of which have recently been digitised and made available to the public here.

One of the main passenger [grumbles] (https://globalstories.ssgreatbritain.org/_/events/grumbles) was boredom. An outward-bound passenger to Australia in 1870 complained:

People are bored now. The first couple of days there were dancing and music in every corner of the ship. Now it only happens occasionally.

An early passenger in 1853 as the ship approached Australia wrote:

All of the passengers playing cards as usual. They are all sick of the voyage and anxious to get to the end of it. It is very dull; there is positively nothing going on save vague talk of a ball on Thursday next.

A passenger in 1872 wrote

The weather is miserable for passengers. Nothing to do and little pleasure on deck.

As boredom grew and the ship sailed through increasingly warm climbs, tempers on board could fray as well. An 1857 passenger wrote:

It is a good thing that we are so near the end of the voyage, for people are beginning to find out the failings of others.

Bad weather or cramped conditions often curtailed other activites. Passengers frequently wrote about rolling seas, or warm, noisy cabins and bad light making reading or writing impossible, and causing havoc during mealtimes.

Passengers would book onto the ship by purchasing a ticket from Gibbs, Bright & Co., who would then assign berths on board in either first, second or steerage class. There were separate compartments for families and single male and female passengers, although in second and steerage, individual passengers would usually have to share their cabin with a mate or, in steerage, 2 or 3 others. Steerage passengers frequently filled their time drinking and partying, and there were several complaints registered about their loud carousing disturbing the more genteel atmosphere of the first class saloon. The booking process didn't always go smoothly: in 1853 during a stopover in Melbourne, local agents mistakenly alotted a number of berths to new passengers to Sydney that were already filled by current occupants. That same trip, the agents also appear to have billeted a number of women on a corridor of the ship previously assigned to individual male passengers, which caused some embarrassment as those passengers had become accustomed to using that corridor while not exactly fully dressed while washing, shaving or using the facilities.