Steam-ships

Opinions are divided as to whether the paddle-wheel is a development from the action of a man paddling a canoe, or the result of applying to a vessel an ordinary wheel, with bla...

Towards the end of the eighteenth century American inventors turned their attention to the problem of navigation by steam, and to one of them, Robert Fulton, the credit of havin...

The first steam-ship built in the United Kingdom (and so far as is known unnamed) was constructed on the River Carron in 1789 by William Symington, and the engines for it were m...

The railway companies early saw the advantages to be gained by the addition of steam-ship services to and from the ports to which their lines ran. Steam-ship owning by the railw...

When once the ability of steam-ships to make open-sea passages such as those between Liverpool, Belfast, and Glasgow had been demonstrated, shipowners began to turn their attent...

The success which attended the voyages of the _Great Western_, and the manifest superiority of that steam-ship over the brigs which were then thought good enough to carry the ma...

The Atlantic was not the only scene of steam-ship enterprise in the early part of the nineteenth century, for merchants and shipowners recognised the importance of a faster and...

The suitability of iron for shipbuilding purposes had been admitted long before the construction of wooden vessels reached its limit as a profitable undertaking. The first exper...

After the launching of the _Great Britain_ in 1845, steam-ship building was carried on with great activity, though the change from wood to iron and from paddles to the screw was...

As early as 1853 mild cast steel had been suggested for shipbuilding, and in 1855 Howell introduced it as “homogeneous metal,” but shipbuilders took little notice of the suggest...

The steam vessels first built for the Navy were hardly worth calling warships and were of little or no value for fighting purposes. The first steam-propelled vessel in the Navy...

Not the least important of the types of steamers which throng the ports of the world--or which used to do so, for their number is decreasing--is the tugboat. Up to a few years a...