Laird Shipyard of Liverpool sent an iron steamer to the Nile in the 1830s.

Three similar iron steamers followed within a few years.

Eventually they built and operated the largest fleet of iron steamers in the world between the mid-1850s and the late-1860s, including five trans-Atlantic passenger liners.

She was an early iron steamer with a tonnage of 2,200.

The line named the iron steamer General Whitney in his honor in 1873.

All of the company's iron steamers were designed by Herman Winter, the line's chief engineer from 1872 to 1891.

The world's first iron steamer was the paddle steamer Aaron Manby of 1821.

She was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic, which she did in 1845, in the time of 14 days.

In 1839 and 1840 Peacock superintended the construction of iron steamers which rounded the Cape, and took part in the Chinese war.

She was not equipped with a double bottom and, like other early iron steamers, her hull compartmentalization was primitive.