Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company was a British engineering company based in Wallsend, North East England, on the River Tyne. The company was founded by Charles Algernon Parsons in 1897 with £500,000 of capital, and specialised in building the steam turbine engines that he had invented for naval use. The first ship to use a Parsons propulsion system was "Turbinia", launched in 1894; the successful demonstration of this vessel led to the creation of the company and the subsequent construction of the engines for the first two turbine-powered destroyers for the Navy, and , launched
Steamship Brunel in 1838, which inaugurated the era of the trans-Atlantic ocean liner. The , built in Britain in 1839 by Francis Pettit Smith, was the world's first screw propeller-driven steamship for open water seagoing. It had considerable influence on ship development, encouraging the adoption of screw propulsion by the Royal Navy, in addition to her influence on commercial vessels. The first screw-driven propeller steamship introduced in America was on a ship built by Thomas Clyde in 1844 and many more ships and routes followed. The key innovation that made ocean-going steamers viable was the change from the paddle-wheel to the