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Screw-driven steamships generally carry the ship prefix "SS" before their names, meaning 'Steam Ship' (or 'Screw Steamer' i.e. 'screw-driven steamship', or 'Screw Schooner' during the 1870s and 1880s, when sail was also carried), paddle steamers usually carry the prefix "PS" and steamships powered by steam turbine may be prefixed "TS" (turbine ship).
The British side-wheel paddle steamer SS Great Western was the first steamship purpose-built for regularly scheduled trans-Atlantic crossings, starting in 1838. In 1836 Isambard Kingdom Brunel and a group of Bristol investors formed the Great Western Steamship Company to build a line of steamships for the Bristol-New York route. [14]
Compound engines, in which steam was expanded twice for greater efficiency, were first used on the Great Lakes in 1869. Triple-expansion engines, for even greater efficiency, were introduced in 1887 and quadruple-expansion engines, the ultimate type of reciprocating engine for speed, power and efficiency, appeared on the lakes in 1894.
The engines were powered by steam from three boilers that consumed as many as 30 cords of wood a day. [ 1 ] [ 4 ] The engines drove a single 30-foot-wide (9.1 m) stern wheel. The Far West also had two steam capstans, one on each side of the bow, being the first boat built with more than one.
Period cutaway diagram of a triple-expansion steam engine installation, circa 1918. This particular diagram illustrates possible engine cutoff locations, after the Lusitania disaster and others made it clear that this was an important safety feature. A marine steam engine is a steam engine that is used to power a ship or boat.
Mounted in the bow was a four-pound wheeled cannon, used to announce the steamer's arrivals, departures and presence, as steam whistles had yet to be invented. [7] Walk-in-the-Water was powered by a single cylinder, 73-horsepower crosshead steam engine with a 40 in (100 cm) bore and 4 ft (1.2 m) stroke, built in New York City by Robert McQueen. [8]
The state-of-the-art ship — equipped with an iron hull and an early steam engine supplementing its sails — Le Lyonnais was built in 1855 for transatlantic passenger and mail service, according ...
Ticonderoga is a museum ship and one of just two [a] remaining sidewheel passenger steamers with an intact walking beam engine of the type that powered countless thousands of American freight and passenger vessels on America's bays, lakes and rivers for more than a century.