History of Steamship Lines - Development

Development

In 1815 the first steamships began to ply between the British ports of Liverpool and Glasgow. In 1826 the United Kingdom, a leviathan steamship, as she was considered at the time of her construction, was built for the London and Edinburgh trade, steamship facilities in the coasting trade being naturally of much greater relative importance in the days before railways. In 1823 the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company was inaugurated, though it was not incorporated until ten years later. The year 1824 saw the incorporation of the General Steam Navigation Company, which was intended not only to provide services in British waters, but also to develop trade with the continent. The St George Steam Navigation Company and the British and Irish Steam Packet Company soon followed. The former was crushed in the keen competition which ensued, but it did a great work in the development of ocean travel. Isolated voyages by vessels fitted with steam engines had been made by the Savannah from the United States in 1819, and by the first Royal William from Canada in 1833, and the desirability of seriously attacking the problem of ocean navigation was apparent to shipping men in the three great British ports of London, Liverpool and Bristol.

Three companies were almost simultaneously organized: the British and American Steam Navigation Company, which made the Thames its headquarters; the Atlantic Steamship Company of Liverpool and the Great Western Steamship Company of Bristol. Each company set to work to build a wooden paddle steamer in its own port. The first to be launched was the Great Western, which took the water in the Avon on the 10th of July 1837. On the 14th of October following, the Liverpool was launched by Messrs Humble, Milcrest & Co., in the port from which she was named, and in May 1838 the Thames-built British Queen was successfully floated. The Great Western was the first to be made ready for sea.