This chapter, like the two that precede it, quashes the myth that the recreational travel and tourism industry began with Thomas Cook and the railway system, pointing instead to the roots developed by the steamboat. It explores the growth of British overseas travel through the origins of commercial steamboat services on the Clyde to the first Dover-Calais route. It pays particular attention to the formation of the General Steam Navigation Company in 1824. It also offers a thorough analysis of overseas excursion advertisements in The Times between 1825 and 1850. It concludes that by the end of the 1840s specialist agencies for overseas travellers had come into existence, alongside other frameworks for tourism that developed out of steamboat technology - pre-dating the mid-century rail-led tourism boom by several years.
Overseas Travel and Tourism – November 2011
