(n.) The act or practice of steering, or directing; as, the steerage of a ship.
(n.) The effect of the helm on a ship; the manner in which an individual ship is affected by the helm.
(n.) The hinder part of a vessel; the stern.
(n.) Properly, the space in the after part of a vessel, under the cabin, but used generally to indicate any part of a vessel having the poorest accommodations and occupied by passengers paying the lowest rate of fare.
(n.) Direction; regulation; management; guidance.
(n.) That by which a course is directed.
Example Sentences:
(1) Yet many of his images dwell on less glamorous urban realities: immigrants arriving in steerage at the docks and the poor huddled masses dwarfed by buildings.
(2) A closed culture, overendowed with powers and as-seen-on-TV weaponry, frequently insolent and seemingly answerable to no one, the uncomfortable role of the police is increasingly to batten down the hatches in steerage while the privileged centile, Westminster in their pockets, pull away in the lifeboats.
(3) And not the kind of commercial organisation which, like Microsoft once was, sends all its executives steerage wherever they travel.
Steerageway
Definition:
(n.) A rate of motion through the water sufficient to render a vessel governable by the helm.