The 1840s contribute a single ship to this directory, and she is enough on her own. Great Britain, launched at Bristol in 1843 for the Great Western Steamship Company, was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and was revolutionary twice over: the first large ocean-going ship built with an iron hull, and the first to combine that hull with screw propulsion instead of paddle wheels. At her launch she was the largest ship in the world. She crossed the Atlantic, carried emigrants to Australia, served as a troopship and ended her working life as a storage hulk in the Falkland Islands, from where she was salvaged in 1970 and towed home to Bristol. Preserved in the dock where she was built, she is not just this decade's survivor — she is the starting point of the modern passenger ship.
1843
Sources: https://ethw.org/ASME-Landmark:SS_Great_Britain https://www.asme.org/about-asme/engineering-history/landmarks/97-ss-great-britain