In most fields there are usually several contenders for the title "greatest", but in terms of 19th century engineering, there can surely be only one winner; he built tunnels, railways, bridges, and the most revolutionary - and largest - ships of his era.

Born in 1806, in a small house in Britain Street, Portsea, whilst his father was working on block-making machinery for the Royal Navy in Portsmouth Dockyard, he was, of course, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

His father, Marc Brunel, was French born, but left his native country to get away from the French Revolution, after publicly criticising Robespierre, one of the main revolutionary leaders, and travelled initially to the USA, where he was awarded American citizenship and held several official positions, including that of Chief Engineer of the city of New York. Unfortunately, no records survive of projects on which he worked, the documentation thought to have been destroyed during the New York Draft Riots of 1861.

So quickly had Marc Brunel been forced to quit France in 1793, that he had left behind the young woman with whom he had fallen in love, Sophie Kingdom, a young Englishwoman who was an orphan and was working as a governess in Rouen. After Marc's hasty departure, Sophie was arrested as an English spy and was daily in fear of being executed, and she probably would have gone to the guillotine, but for the fall of Robespierre in 1794.

She was finally able to leave France in 1795 and travelled to London and then, in 1799, the couple were reunited, when Marc Brunel arrived in London, carrying plans for his revolutionary block making machinery, which he wanted to put before the Royal Navy.

Why he chose to offer his talents to Britain, rather than to the Americans is not quite clear, but it certainly did not take the Admiralty long to appreciate his value, and by 1802 the world's first automated production line was more or less ready to start working in Portsmouth dockyard, although the number of machines was increased further over the next few years, until there were a total of 45, producing 130,000 blocks per year.

It's surprising that such a talented man as Marc Brunel often struggled financially; initially the Royal Navy messed him about over payment for the blocks his machinery were producing, at first making him a payment of just £1,000, and it wasn't until 1810 that they finally paid over £17,000.

Brunel was made a member of the Royal Society in 1814, but good as he was when it came to engineering matters, as a businessman he was as close to hopeless as it's possible to get and he ended up in the debtors prison at Southwark in 1821. Debtors were allowed to take their families with them in those days and Sophie quickly joined him.

As time passed and there seemed no prospect of release, Marc Brunel began corresponding with Alexander I of Russia, about the possibility of emigrating to Russia with his family, if the Tsar settled his debts for him, but news of this leaked out and, faced with the prospect of losing such an eminently talented engineer, prominent figures, led by the Duke of Wellington, pressed the government to intervene.

Eventually, the government agreed to settle £5,000 on Marc Brunel, to clear his debts and set him back on his feet again, so long as he gave an undertaking to abandon any future thoughts of moving to Russia; this he did and in August 1821, he was released from prison, after 88 days incarceration.

Much of Brunel's financial misfortune had been caused by his project to build the Thames Tunnel, between Rotherhithe and Wapping; despite patenting his tunneling shield (in 1818), modified and modernised versions of which are still used by engineers today, because of the unstable conditions beneath the river, the whole venture had foundered, but now at last, in February 1824 a meeting was held and 2,128 shares at £50 each were subscribed for. In June 1824 the Thames Tunnel Company was incorporated by royal assent.

Marc Brunel was now joined by his son Isambard, who was just eighteen years old, although he would soon be appointed as his father's Chief Engineering Assistant, as both his father and the original assistant engineer kept suffering from bouts of ill-health and the youngster had to shoulder most of the responsibility himself anyway!

It's perhaps interesting to note that although Marc Brunel preferred to be known by his middle name, which was also Isambard, history nowadays refers to him by his first name, to avoid confusion with his son, who has undoubtedly become more famous down the years.

Isambard - the younger one, that is - had shown a natural talent for mathematics and engineering from a very early age and his parents were determined that he should receive the best education possible, and at the age of fourteen he was sent to France, to the Lycée Henri-Quatre, in Paris and then to the University of Caen, in Normandy.

When Isambard was fifteen, Marc was sent to debtors prison, but his education had been paid for for a while in advance and he remained in France; when the government of Britain settled Marc's debts, Isambard probably breathed a sigh of relief and stayed on to complete his qualifications.

Now, joining his father on the Thames Tunnel project, he was about to demonstrate to the world that he was indeed something special, although first the pair had to overcome objections from the William Smith, the Chairman of the Thames Tunnel Company, who thought that the tunneling shield was an unnecessary luxury and wanted Marc Brunel replaced at the head of the project, so that the tunneling could be carried out by more traditional, cheaper methods.

Fortunately, however, the shield quickly proved its worth and work progressed at a previously unknown rate, although, because the tunnel was so close to the water of the Thames above, there were frequent episodes of flooding and in 1827, there was one near disaster when a huge hole opened up and the rush of water very nearly swept Isambard away - luckily, a quick-thinking worker grabbed his jacket and hauled him to safety.

Isambard came up with a novel way of plugging the hole, lowering in sacks full of rocks and earth from above, toghether with a form of mortar that held everything together, until the lined walls of the tunnel had passed beyond the repair work area.

Unfortunately, the following year, in 1828, the Thames Tunnel Company's funds dried up, which was more than could be said for the tunnel itself, and the site was sealed up and abandoned. Fed up with their meddlesome Chairman, the Brunels resigned and went off to work on other projects, but in 1832, Smith was deposed as Chairman and, two years later the government sanctioned a loan of £246,000 to the company - an unbelievable sum for those days!

The old 80-ton shield was removed and replaced by a brand new 140 ton version, that consisted of around 9,000 separate parts, all of which had to be assembled underground.

Tunneling started again, although there were still flooding problems and many of the miners were badly affected by breathing in the fumes from the polluted river water - remember, this was all before Sir Joseph Bazalgette sorted out London's sewer system and the Thames was little better than one huge toilet!

As the tunnel began to approach the shore on the Wapping side of the river, work began in 1841 on sinking a vertical shaft, similar to the access shaft on the Rotherhithe embankment; this took eighteen months to complete and then, in 1841, Marc Brunel was knighted by the new young Queen, Victoria, at the suggestion of her husband, Prince Albert, a great admirer of Brunel's and a supporter of new engineering, science and technology in general.

The tunnel finally opened on the Wapping side of the river on 1 August 1842, but on 7 November of the same year, Marc Brunel suffered a stroke, which left his partially paralysed on his right side for some time. On 25 March, 1943, the tunnel was finally officially opened completely and Brunel senior, although still far from well, made sure he attended the ceremony.

On 26 July, the Queen and Prince Albert visited the tunnel, but although it had originally been intended for horse-drawn traffic, it remained as a pedestrian subway only.

After the opening of the tunnel, Marc Brunel remained in generally poor health and had a further stroke in 1845, which left his right side almost totally paralysed; he never again accepted any engineering commissions, although he did continue to help and advise his son until finally, on 12 December 1849, he died at the ripe old age of eighty.

However, before his death, he was proudly in attendance at the launching of the SS Great Britain, the world's first screw-propeller driven passenger ship, on 19 July 1843 and a vessel that would carry a team of English cricketers around the world to Australia, in 1861. Curiously, although the Great Britain had originally been designed as a trans-Atlantic liner, most of her voyages were between Britain and Australia, as she was also equipped with square-rigged sails and three tall masts, so she was able to cruise under wind power alone, when the winds were favourable, thus saving a great deal of fuel and increasing her range between stop-overs..

She was also used as a troopship during the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, but she ended her working life in the Falkland Islands, after having been converted to haul coal. However, when she arrived in the Falklands, it was discovered that a fire on board had damaged her beyond economic repair and she was used as a warehouse.

Eventually, she was "rescued" from total destruction and brought back to Bristol on a pontoon, a rather sorry-looking wreck of a hull that has since been fully restored and is now open to the public at Bristol, and well worth a visit, if you're ever down that way.

It's difficult to know which of his achievements Isambard Brunel is best remembered for today. Many people would suggest the Clifton Suspension bridge, which remains in prominent use and is very visible - it also had the longest span of any bridge in the world when it was first opened.

But the Royal Albert Bridge across the Tamar River, near Plymouth, is another stunning spectacle and then there were his other ships, which included the SS Great Western, launched back in 1838 and designed as the first trans-Atlantic steamship and the much larger SS Great Eastern, which was over 32,000 tons and could carry 4,000 passengers around the world without needing to refuel.

She remained the largest ship ever launched until the beginning of the twentieth century, and she caused a fuss and a great deal of embarrassment to Brunel, when she refused to slide sideways into the water at her original launching ceremony.

"Big Babe" as Brunel referred to the Great Eastern was finally floated on 31 January 1858, but her maiden voyage the following year ended in disaster, when a huge explosion killed five stokers, severely injured several others and caused another to jump overboard in panic - he was never recovered and the ship limped ignominiously back to port for repairs.

Shortly after this aborted maiden voyage, Brunel, who had been taken ill on the great ship's deck, just before she set out on her "revised" maiden voyage to New York, died on 15 April, 1959, at the age of just 53, after a series of illnesses had plagued the last few years of his life.

The Great Eastern unfortunately turned out to be something of a white elephant on the Atlantic run, purely because not enough people could afford her luxury and she frequentlymade the crossing with many of her cabins empty.

Improvements in engine design also meant that other liners could make the trips to and from the USA much more economically, but there was one job for which the great ship was the only vessel even remotely suitable - laying the Trans-Atlantic telegraph cable.

To prepare her for this role, she had one funnel removed, as well as many of her former state cabins, in order to make room for huge open-topped conatiner areas, in which the massive cable drums were stored.

At the end of her cable laying career she was refitted once again as a liner but once again efforts to make her a commercial success failed. She was used as a showboat, a floating palace-come-concert hall and gymnasiumbut by the time she was sold piecemeal at auction in 1888, she had become an embarrassment and she was finally broken up in Liverpool between 1889 and 1890, when it took eighteen months to dismantle her.

Like his father, Isambard Brunel was buried in Kensal Green Cemetary, in London; he left behind his widow, Mary and three children: Isambard Brunel Junior (1837–1902), Henri Marc Brunel (1842–1903) and Florence Mary Brunel (1847–1876). Henri Marc enjoyed some degree of success as a civil engineer.

It was a great pity that Isambard Brunel did not live longer, if only so that he could have eventually accepted the knighthood that must surely have come his way before too much longer, for as I said at the beginning of this article, there can be few other men who could challenge his right to be known as the greatest engineer of his day - small in physical stature, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's shadow was cast large over the world in which he lived, and his reputation will endure even longer than those of his achievements which still endure and remain in use to this day.