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 most of the voyage was actually made under sail. The first ship to make the transatlantic trip substantially under steam power may have been the British-built Dutch-owned "Curaçao", a wooden 438 ton vessel built in Dover and powered by two 50 hp engines, which crossed from Hellevoetsluis, near Rotterdam on 26 April 1827 to Paramaribo, Surinam on 24 May, spending 11 days under steam on the way out and more on the return. Another claimant is the Canadian ship in 1833. The first steamship purpose-built for regularly scheduled trans-Atlantic crossings was the British side-wheel paddle steamer built by Isambard Kingdom