Steamship in the context of "The Innocents Abroad"

The Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary is a National Marine Sanctuary in the United States located in the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland. It is best known for the "Ghost Fleet," 118 historic shipwrecks in Mallows Bay in the sanctuary's northeast corner which is the largest shipwreck fleet in the Western Hemisphere. They are among more than 200 shipwrecks in the sanctuary, some of which date as far back as the American Revolutionary War and others to the American Civil War.

In addition to shipwrecks, the sanctuary preserves historical sites related to Native Americans, some of them as much as 12,000 years old, as well as a lengthy span of United States history, including the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, steamboat and steamship activity during the Industrial Revolution, and what was once an important Potomac River fishing industry. It also protects sites dating as far back as the 17th century related to African-American history, as well as an ecologically and biologically important area of the Potomac River and its Maryland shoreline that supports many species of plants and animals.

A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine driving paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, whereby the first uses were wheelers driven by animals or humans.

In the early 19th century, paddle wheels were the predominant way of propulsion for steam-powered boats. In the late 19th century, paddle propulsion was largely superseded by the screw propeller and other marine propulsion systems that have a higher efficiency, especially in rough or open water.

Transpacific crossings are voyages of passengers and cargo across the Pacific Ocean between Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. Transpacific voyages frequently cross the International Date Line. The first recorded crossing of the Pacific was achieved by Spain's historic Magellan expedition in March 1521. Commercial transpacific flights have been available since 1935.

Exodus 1947 was a packet steamship that was built in the United States in 1928 as President Warfield for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company. From her completion in 1928 until 1942 she carried passengers and freight across Chesapeake Bay between Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland.

From 1942 President Warfield served in the Second World War as a barracks and training ship for the British Armed Forces. In 1944 she was commissioned into the United States Navy as USS President Warfield (IX-169), a station and accommodation ship for the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach.

A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. The term steamboat is used to refer to small steam-powered vessels working on lakes, rivers, and in short-sea shipping. The development of the steamboat led to the larger steamship, which is a seaworthy and often ocean-going ship.

Steamboats sometimes use the prefix designation SS, S.S. or S/S (for 'Screw Steamer') or PS (for 'Paddle Steamer'); however, these designations are most often used for steamships.

A broadside is the side of a ship, or more specifically the battery of cannon on one side of a warship or their coordinated fire in naval warfare, or a measurement of a warship's maximum simultaneous firepower which can be delivered upon a single target (because this concentration is usually obtained by firing a broadside). From the 16th century until the early decades of the steamship, vessels had rows of guns set in each side of the hull. Firing all guns on one side of the ship became known as a "broadside". The cannon of 18th-century men of war were accurate only at short range, and their penetrating power mediocre, which meant that the thick hulls of wooden ships could only be pierced at short ranges. These wooden ships sailed closer and closer towards each other until cannon fire would be effective. Each tried to be the first to fire a broadside, often giving one party a decisive headstart in the battle when it crippled the other ship.

The Great French Wine Blight was a severe blight of the mid-19th century that destroyed many of the vineyards in France and laid waste to the wine industry. It was caused by an insect that originated in North America and was carried across the Atlantic in the late 1850s. The actual genus of the insect is still debated, although it is largely considered to have been a species of Daktulosphaira vitifoliae, commonly known as grape phylloxera. While France is considered to have been worst affected, the blight also did a great deal of damage to vineyards in other European countries.

How Phylloxera was introduced to Europe remains debated: American vines had been taken to Europe many times before, for reasons including experimentation and trials in grafting, without consideration of the possibility of the introduction of pestilence. While the Phylloxera was thought to have arrived around 1858, it was first recorded in France in 1863, in the former province of Languedoc. It is argued by some that the introduction of such pests as phylloxera was only a problem after the invention of steamships, which allowed a faster journey across the ocean, and consequently allowed pests such as the Phylloxera to survive the trip.

Bunkering is the supplying of fuel for use by ships (such fuel is referred to as bunker), including the logistics of loading and distributing the fuel among available shipboard tanks. A person dealing in trade of bunker (fuel) is called a bunker trader.

The term bunkering originated in the days of steamships, when coal was stored in bunkers. Nowadays, the term bunker is generally applied to the petroleum products stored in tanks, and bunkering to the practice and business of refueling ships. Bunkering operations take place at seaports and include the storage and provision of the bunker (ship fuels) to vessels.

The Georgian Bay (French: Baie Georgienne) is a large bay of Lake Huron, in the Laurentia bioregion. It is located entirely within the borders of Ontario, Canada. The main body of the bay lies east of the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island. To its northwest is the North Channel.

The Georgian Bay is surrounded by (listed clockwise) the districts of Manitoulin, Sudbury, Parry Sound and Muskoka, as well as the more populous counties of Simcoe, Grey and Bruce. The Main Channel separates the Bruce Peninsula from Manitoulin Island and connects the Georgian Bay to the rest of Lake Huron. The North Channel, located between Manitoulin Island and the Sudbury District, west of Killarney, was once a popular route for steamships and is now used by a variety of pleasure craft to travel to and from the Georgian Bay.

Woolwich Dockyard (formally H.M. Dockyard, Woolwich, also known as The King's Yard, Woolwich) was an English naval dockyard along the river Thames at Woolwich—originally in north-west Kent, now in southeast London—where many ships were built from the early 16th century until the late 19th century. William Camden called it 'the Mother Dock of all England'. By virtue of the size and quantity of vessels built there, Woolwich Dockyard is described as having been 'among the most important shipyards of seventeenth-century Europe'. During the Age of Sail, the yard continued to be used for shipbuilding and repair work more or less consistently; in the 1830s a specialist factory within the dockyard oversaw the introduction of steam power for ships of the Royal Navy. At its largest extent it filled a 56-acre site north of Woolwich Church Street, between Warspite Road and New Ferry Approach; 19th-century naval vessels were fast outgrowing the yard, however, and it eventually closed in 1869 (though a large part of the site remained in military hands for a further century). The former dockyard area is now partly residential, partly industrial, with remnants of its historic past having been restored.