ABSTRACT
The nineteenth century was a turning point for American-European travel. In March 1838, the steamship Great Western made her first transatlantic journey. She was the first purpose-built vessel to make the trip and sparked an era of leisure travel like none before. A combination of peace, prosperity, and innovation ignited a flurry of transcontinental activity. Many twentieth-century travel historians have written about the marked increase in American-European travel during the nineteenth century. However, while informative, their findings are impressions and cannot be gauged. Prior to the nineteenth century, travel was rare for women and usually resulted from accompanying a husband or father on a business-related trip. By the early nineteenth century, women occasionally traveled alone, unaccompanied by an escort, but this was not the norm. Great leaps in technology, specifically in transportation, made travel during the late nineteenth century cheaper, easier, and more accessible to everyone.
