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PS Caledonia (1815)

paddle steamer

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ12305045 ↗
Source-derived summary

Caledonia was a paddle steamer built in Scotland in 1815. The ship was bought by a Danish businessman in 1819 and it became the first steamship registered in Denmark. It spent most of its active years in Denmark operating between the cities of Copenhagen and Kiel. Broken up around 1843.

Under British registry

Caledonia was launched on 27 April 1815 at John Wood & Co. in Port Glasgow, near Glasgow. She had two steam engines, supplied by the Greenhead Foundry Company in Glasgow. The combined engine power was 36 nominal hp, corresponding to between 100 and 180 indicated hp. The original speed of the ship was between 6 and 8 knots. Caledonia was the largest steamer built on the Clyde at the time and only one of the earlier ships had used the system with two engines.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “PS Caledonia (1815)” as paddle steamer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Caledonia, paddle and steamer.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1815, 1819, 1843—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Caledonia, paddle and steamer providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “PS Caledonia (1815)”, the useful work is to connect “paddle steamer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12305045. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1815, 1819 and 1843.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “PS Caledonia (1815)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow PS Caledonia (1815) primary sources, PS Caledonia (1815) archive and Caledonia research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “PS Caledonia (1815)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.