The technological development of the ship between 1800 and 1914 was dramatic, encompassing the shift from wood and sail to iron, steel and steam. This volume offers a multi-disciplinary approach to the history of the ship in the long nineteenth century. It illustrates the ways in which the material elements of the ship, together with the scientific, artisan and seafaring ideas and practices that endowed the ship with its character, may be approached from different historical, geographical, cultural and literary perspectives.