Ship travel describes a wide variety of activity across the oceans, seas, lakes, and inland waterways across the world. Ships are large boats that carry freight and passengers and sometimes both at the same time. Since the earliest times, there has been evidence of man-made ships that have been powered by wind or rowing, but since the advent of the steam engine in the 19th century, ship design and engineering has been improving, resulting in much safer and faster journeys by sea.

Charles Dickens, who left Liverpool Docks in 1842 on board the SS Britannia, a Cunard Line passenger steam ship, to cross the Atlantic Ocean to the United States, described a tortuous journey of rough seas and violent discomfort. Such accounts are far fewer these ...