For thousands of years, oceans provided one of the fastest and most valuable forms of transportation. By 3200 B.C.E., Egyptian ships made of reeds (tall, woody grass) used sails to travel along the coast of northern Africa. Over the centuries, ocean-going ships became larger and faster. Around 1000 B.C.E. the Vikings explored the coast of Canada in sailboats. Spanish ships explored the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. British tall ships carried settlers to the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Africa in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.

Until the mid-twentieth century, ships were the only mode of transportation for ocean crossings. The rise of air transportation after 1930 reduced the role of ocean-going vessels in transportation. Airplanes provided a quicker and often cheaper way to move people great distances, which caused the types of vessels and purposes of ocean transportation to...