Oceanic Trade (French Trafalgar, British Waterloo)

Oceanic Trade is the massive industry where passengers and cargo are transported over the oceans around the world. Although the passenger trade has mostly been reduced to simply cruises from different ports of call, namely tourist resorts, with the rise of jet airliners and bullet trains, the cargo trade is still the most important way to ship goods, due to the fact that shipping goods by ship is cheaper than by train, truck and air.

History (since 1805)
With the end of the First Great European War in the early 1800s, nations such as and the  rapidly developed their merchant marines to trade with the rest of the world. By the 1830s, before the, the first steam engines were placed on ships, powering massive paddle wheels, although sails were still vital. This gave companies more reliability when it came to shipping schedules, as before this point, ships with sails were unpredictable due to weather and winds.

As the many of the smaller nations in Europe and the US began to industrialize in the mid 19th century, the need for raw materials and shipping finished goods lead to massive changes in the development of Maritime Trade. Wood was replaced with iron, which in turn was superseded by steel, while steam engines went from a novelty, to a reliance, to the only way to cross.