Communications between Europe and the Americas have been an essential element in the development of the Atlantic economy. In this context, the coming of steam in the nineteenth century was truly revolutionary in its impact. Not merely did steam bring greater speed; it also brought greater reliability and the regularization of commercial intercourse through scheduled liner services. These attributes were unobtainable under sail, and it was not until the late 1830s that steamships were sufficiently improved technologically to provide a measure of regular, transatlantic steam departures and arrivals. Long before this, however, the concept of liner services had been considered. Indeed, in 1819 an enterprise named the Ocean Steam Ship Company was incorporated in New York. Its organizers stated their aims as “desirous of constructing and employing steamships in navigating the oceans,” but nothing came of this project. In the same year came the much-publicized transatlantic crossing of Savannah. It was a dubious achievement for steam as the engine was used for only about thirteen percent of the whole voyage. More significant was a development in Britain in 1824, little more than a decade after the first commercial utilization of the steamship in Europe, the operation of Comet on the Clyde in 1812. The American and Colonial Steam Navigation Company (A&C), as the venture was entitled, proved unsuccessful, and perhaps this explains its neglect by some historians of transatlantic shipping. The A&C's history, however, merits consideration on a number of counts. Apart from its remarkably early timing, its imaginative ambition and its sad failure, the company is of interest in terms of what it reveals about the level of contemporary appreciation of technology. Living with and understanding technological progress are processes that are nowadays taken for granted; in the early stages of industrialization these were new experiences to be confronted. This paper reviews the thinking that lay behind the formation of the A&C, its unfortunate history and the insight it provides into the prevailing limited understanding of new technology and its operation.