The American writer Erna Fergusson, who came here in the aftermath of the 27-year rule of the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez, described the series of lines she had to endure just to board a steamer from Maracaibo to Curaçao.
Less than 24 hours later, he gathered up his electric marvel and boarded a transatlantic steamer.
On the wet afternoon of 9 December 1933, the year Hitler came to power, as "a thousand glistening umbrellas were tilted over a thousand bowler hats", Paddy left London, boarding a Dutch steamer at Irongate wharf.
He boarded a horse-drawn carriage, then a steamer across the Amur River, and then a small trawler ship across the Okhotsk Sea.
Arana appears before Parliament's committee on the Putumayo, after which he boards a steamer back to Peru untouched.
As she comments, "To step on board a steamer in a Spanish port, and three hours later to land in a country without a guide-book, is a sensation to rouse the hunger of the repletest sight-seer".
You might sail all the way downriver from Glasgow, or (a more popular choice) take a train from one of three city termini to reach the firth at one of half-a-dozen railhead piers and board a steamer there.
I was passenger on board a steamer going down the western side of the Straits of Malacca at the southern end, on the morning of the 27th of August last, and was called up by the captain to observe the unusual appearance of the sky, which was as brilliantly lit up as if by the electric light when first introduced, i.e. with a flicker.
With much toil he managed to load on board a steamer on the St . Lawrenceriver about two thousand pounds of stocks and stores including a stove and other heavy articles, and on the evening of that day he debarked with his cargo at Cornwall about thirty miles from Alexandria.
