The first tentative attempt at utilizing steam power at sea was made in 1819 with the diminutive Savannah. The engine was used merely as an auxiliary to the sails, but the Savannah nevertheless managed to reach Liverpool from Georgia, USA, in 28 days. It was, however, nineteen years before the first Atlantic crossing under continuous steam power was made by the paddle steamer Sirius. On the early steamers, the engines had to be stopped every two days or so for the boilers to be scaled to remove the clogging deposits of salt, the result of using seawater, since as yet the engines had no condensers to allow fresh water to be recycled. Coal also had its inconveniences. Throughout the history of the steam-driven vessel, loading coal was an appalling task, clouds of coal dust penetrating to every corner of the ship. Even worse was the mortality of stokers and firemen whose lives were spent in dreadful conditions, shovelling and straining in the intense heat and dust of the stokeholds.

For some years, the major rivers and estuaries of Britain had been important as water highways, and were often more efficient than the badly kept and frequently impassable roads of the day. Rivers were widened and deepened to provide canals, as heavy goods could be more easily transported by water than by packhorse or carrier's wagon, saving time and money. At first, craft were bound by the limitations of all sailing vessels, adverse winds or strong river flows delaying them for days, and it was not unusual for barges to be sculled or towed by hand. It was not long before the earliest steamboats had shown their ability to overcome these problems and river steamers became established as passenger and cargo carriers in their own right. Since they were powering smaller ships unhampered by tows, the smaller engines and inefficient boilers of the period were not at such a disadvantage on rivers as they might have been at sea.

The advent of steam-driven vessels had implications for seafarers of African descent in several respects. One of the first of these was the fact that the development of the shallow-draught paddle steamer helped to open up the African interior, largely terra incognita to most Europeans before that time.