Why early steamships still carried sails

A closer look

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean with a massive iron boiler full of pressurized boiling water terrified 19th-century sailors, and rightly so. Early steam engines had a horrific tendency to casually explode or simply break down halfway across the sea. As an ultimate safety blanket, massive steamships were still heavily rigged with traditional canvas sails, essentially making them the very first aggressively clunky hybrid vehicles.