Steam Boats

The shipping industry in Aguara is in transition from sail-powered boats (and Wind Magic powered) to steam-powered boats, and from wood construction to an ever-increasing metal construction. There were basically two different types of ships being used: standard sailing ships of several different types, and paddle steamers with paddles mounted on the side or rear. River steamboats typically used rear-mounted paddles and had flat bottoms and shallow hulls designed to carry large loads on generally smooth and occasionally shallow rivers. Ocean-going paddle steamers typically used side-wheeled paddles and used narrower, deeper hulls designed to travel in the often stormy weather encountered at sea.
Since paddle steamers typically require from 5 to 16 tons of coal per day to keep their engines running, they are more expensive to run. Initially, nearly all seagoing steamboats are equipped with mast and sails to supplement the steam engine power and provide power for occasions when the steam engine needed repair or maintenance. These steamships typically concentrated on high value cargo, mail and passengers and only had moderate cargo capabilities because of their required loads of coal. The typical paddle wheel steamship was powered by a coal burning engine that required firemen to shovel the coal to the burners.

Access & Availability

The Iridan City is closely watched by the Aguarian goverment. When these new ships came into port, the King demanded to inspect them and thus, with the help of some Inborn aids, copied the design to replicate on his own.

Utility

Once the technology arrived in Aguara, the Inborn artisans got to work improving upon the design.
The result is the simple, versatile, locomotive-style boilers fitted to most "steamwheels" that could burn coal, when available in more populated areas, or wood in the more remote areas, such as Fort Eldridge
The hulls are generally wooden, although iron, steel and composite hulls are gradually overtaking them. They are braced internally with a series of built-up longitudinal timbers.
Steamboats tend to have fairly short life-spans. The hard usage they are subjected to and inherent flexibility of their shallow wooden hulls mean that relatively few of them have careers longer than a decade.

The Princess Steamboat, 1857, Mississippi River

Typical steam boats being used in Aguara thanks to the Empire's technology.

Discovery

Scholars working for the Empire needed a new engine when the Emperor decreed they needed something faster and less reliant on Magic for "working, towing, expediting and facilitating the voyage of ships, sloops and barges and other vessels upon the water". Steam technology as a whole was beginning to take shape in the Empire and they piggybacked on that research.
The resulting Steam Ships were used to transport goods around the Empire on Ocean and River.
They then applied this technology to make the trip across the Elder Sea to Aguara in better time. The current journey was taking almost a four months to make using traditional Sail Powered Ships. With a combination of sails powered by wind magic, and steam engines greatly increasing speed.
A hybrid Sail-Steam Ship was put into use 30 years ago and is now the standard mode of transportation across the Elder Sea, making a large cargo vessels travel time from the Empire to Iridan City port in just 27 days. Smaller streamlined ships can make the trip in just 10 days, with rotating shifts at the sails and the newest steam engines.