The government of Myanmar has two ministries controlling transportation, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Rail Transport.
A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. Steamboats sometimes use the prefix designation SS, S.S. or S/S or PS ; however, these designations are most often used for steamships.
A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine driving paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, whereby the first uses were wheelers driven by animals or humans.
PS Waverley is the last seagoing passenger-carrying paddle steamer in the world. Built in 1946, she sailed from Craigendoran on the Firth of Clyde to Arrochar on Loch Long until 1973. Bought by the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society (PSPS), she has been restored to her 1947 appearance and now operates passenger excursions around the British coast.
The Irrawaddy River is the largest river in Myanmar. Originating from the confluence of the N'mai and Mali rivers, it flows from north to south before emptying through the Irrawaddy Delta in the Ayeyarwady Region into the Andaman Sea. Its drainage basin of about 404,000 square kilometres (156,000 sq mi) covers 61% of the land area of Burma, and contains five of its largest cities.
RMS Britannia was an ocean liner of the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, later known as Cunard Steamship Company. She was launched on Wednesday 5 February 1840, at the yard of Robert Duncan & Company in Greenock, Scotland. The ship and her Britannia-class sisters, Acadia, Caledonia, and Columbia, were the first ocean liners built by the company.
William Denny and Brothers Limited, often referred to simply as Denny, was a Scottish shipbuilding company.
P. Henderson & Company, also known as Paddy Henderson, was a ship owning and management company based in Glasgow, Scotland and operating to Burma and New Zealand. Patrick Henderson started business in Glasgow as a merchant at the age of 25 in 1834. He had three brothers. Two were merchants working for an agent in the Italian port of Leghorn; the third, George, was a sea captain with his own ship.
"Mandalay" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, written and published in 1890, and first collected in Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses in 1892. The poem is set in colonial Burma, then part of British India. The protagonist is a Cockney working-class soldier, back in grey, restrictive London, recalling the time he felt free and had a Burmese girlfriend, now unattainably far away.
Rail transport in Myanmar began in 1877. Three private rail companies were nationalised nineteen years later. During the Japanese occupation of Burma, Allied prisoners of war were forced to build the Burma Railway. Myanmar Railways has expanded its network somewhat since 1988.
The Twante Canal is a canal that connects the Irrawaddy River and the Yangon river in Myanmar. The 35 km (22 mi) canal is a heavily used short cut between the city of Yangon and the Irrawaddy Division. The canal is named after the town of Twante, located near the canal's mid-way point. The canal was the quickest route from Yangon to the Irrawaddy Delta until the 1990s when roads between Yangon and the Irrawaddy Division became usable year round. The canal is still heavily used.
The Third Anglo-Burmese War, also known as the Third Burma War, took place during 7–29 November 1885, with sporadic resistance continuing into 1887. It was the final of three wars fought in the 19th century between the Burmese and the British. The war saw the loss of sovereignty of an independent Burma under the Konbaung dynasty, whose rule had already been reduced to the territory known as Upper Burma, the region of Lower Burma having been annexed by the British in 1853, following the Second Anglo-Burmese War.
Steamboat services started on the Thames in around 1815 and for nearly 25 years were the main use of steam to carry passengers before the emergence of railways in the south of England. During this time at least 80 steamers are recorded in the Thames and the Steamboat Act of 1819 became the first statute to regulate the safety of the new technology for the public. Wooden boats driven by paddle-wheels, they managed during this time to establish themselves as faster and more reliable than the earlier use of sailing and rowing boats for passenger transport within the Thames estuary.
David MacBrayne is a limited company owned by the Scottish Government. Formed in 1851 as the private shipping company David Hutcheson & Co. with three partners, David Hutcheson, Alexander Hutcheson and David MacBrayne, it passed in 1878 to David MacBrayne.
Kyauktawgyi Buddha Temple is a Buddhist temple located on Mindhamma Hill on Insein Township, Yangon, Burma. The temple houses a 37 feet (11 m) feet tall Buddha called the Loka Chantha Abhaya Labha Muni, which is carved out of a single piece of white marble quarried in Sagyin Hill, Madaya Township, Mandalay Region. The image weighs approximately 560 tons. The Buddha is carved making the abhayamudra (အဘယမုဒြာ), the gesture of fearlessness.
Captain Richard Boswell Rushall was a British sea captain and businessman who served as mayor of Rangoon, Burma, during the 1930s. He was the first Englishman to hold this position. Born in Braunston, Northamptonshire, Rushall was the eldest of eight children. After finishing school he left for sea, joined the UK's Merchant Navy, and became a ship's captain. He spent 20 years with the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, of which 17 were in command of steamships belonging to the company. In 1908 he settled in Rangoon with his family, resigned from the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company and founded Rushall & Co. Ltd., a stevedoring and contracting business that employed between 3,000 and 4,000 men.
PS Waverley was a Clyde-built paddle steamer that carried passengers on the Clyde between 1899 and 1939. She was requisitioned by the Admiralty to serve as a minesweeper during World War I and again in World War II, and was sunk while participating in the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. The current PS Waverley, launched in 1946, was built as a replacement for this vessel.
Frederick Charles Kennedy CIE (1849–1916) was a Scottish entrepreneur in Asia who came to command and direct the largest river fleet of the 19th century.
Emu, later Brightside, was an iron-hulled paddle steamer that was built in Scotland in 1864 for using in Australia. For her first few years, she worked on the Brisbane River and Moreton Bay. From 1868, she was a local ferry in Sydney Harbour. From 1902, she was a cargo ship. She was scrapped in Sydney in 1909.
Sydney Harbour ferry services date back to the first years of Sydney's European settlement. Slow and sporadic boats ran along the Parramatta River from Sydney to Parramatta and served the agricultural settlements in between. By the mid-1830s, speculative ventures established regular services. From the late-nineteenth century the North Shore developed rapidly. A rail connection to Milsons Point took alighting ferry passengers up the North Shore line to Hornsby, New South Wales via North Sydney. Without a bridge connection, increasingly large fleets of steamers serviced the cross harbour routes and in the early twentieth century, Sydney Ferries Limited was the largest ferry operator in the world.
