First transatlantic crossing by steamship

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Grace Moore (University of Otago)

Domains

Maritime
Steam power

Dates

Date of occurrence 1838

Places

United Kingdom (Location)
United States (Location)

On April 8^th 1838 the “Great Western”, the first steam-powered ship left Bristol docks for New York, arriving a mere 15 days later (at a time when sailing vessels took 30 days). In design “Great Western” derived from sailing vessels, having four masts and being capable of sailing, but also being powered by paddle wheels on either side.

The ship's designer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59), went on in 1843 to design the “Great Britain”, the largest ship in the world at that time at 3270 tons displacement and 98m long, and the first ship with an iron hull and screw propulsion. (The ship retained six masts so it could move under sail when the winds were fair or should the engines fail.) Sceptics thought …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

246 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "First transatlantic crossing by steamship". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 June 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1571, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

First transatlantic crossing by steamship

Domains

Dates

Places

Save this article

Leave Feedback