The 21-metre, 224-ton granite obelisk—originally raised at Heliopolis around 1450 BC—was encased in an iron cylinder vessel named Cleopatra and towed toward England as a gift from the Khedive of Egypt. The crossing nearly ended in disaster when a storm in the Bay of Biscay set the tow adrift and killed six sailors, but the obelisk survived to be erected on London's Victoria Embankment in 1878.
Cleopatra's Needle has nothing to do with Cleopatra; it was carved for Pharaoh Thutmose III around 1450 BC and originally stood before the Temple of Heliopolis. By the 19th century it lay half-buried in sand near Alexandria, a gift promised to Britain in 1819 to commemorate victories over Napoleon, but for decades no one wanted to pay for moving a 224-ton stone.
Engineer John Dixon finally solved the problem by encasing the obelisk in a purpose-built iron pontoon, essentially turning the monument itself into a ship's hull. Christened Cleopatra, the vessel was towed out from Alexandria under tow of the steamer Olga.
The journey turned nearly fatal in the Bay of Biscay, where a violent storm set Cleopatra rolling wildly; six crewmen from the Olga drowned attempting a rescue, and the obelisk-ship was cut loose and presumed lost for days before being found adrift by a Spanish trawler. Salvaged and towed on to England, it was finally erected on the Victoria Embankment in September 1878, a memorial plaque there honoring the six sailors who died getting it to London.
Key people: John Dixon