[STERN sb.3] A paddle-wheel placed at the stern of a small river or lake steamer.
1816. U.S. Patent (John L. Sullivan) 10 Dec. Double stern wheel for boats.
1896. Markham, in Geog. Jrnl., VII. 188. [The steam-launch] is propelled by a stern wheel.
attrib. 1856. Olmsted, Slave States, 368. The boat I was in … was a stern-wheel craft.
1882. C. Rockwell, in Harper’s Mag., Dec., 3/2. Our stern-wheel boat creeps along up stream close to the banks.
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 3 Oct., 8/2. A new stern-wheel steamboat for the Nile expedition.
b. transf. in jocular use (U.S.).
1859. Bartlett, Dict. Amer. (ed. 2), 450. The term is applied to any thing small, petty; as, a ‘stern-wheel church.’
Hence Sternwheel v. intr., to move by the agency of a stern-wheel. Sternwheeler, a boat propelled by a stern-wheel.
1859. Bartlett, Dict. Amer. (ed. 2), 450. Stern-Wheeler. A steamboat fitted up with a stern-wheel.
1905. A. Balfour, in Blackw. Mag., April, 545/1. The Amka, bluff-bowed and unlovely, stern-wheels slowly from the murky flood into the green water which glides between the silting banks of sand.
1906. H. Spender, in Macm. Mag., Oct., 939. Our little neat stern-wheeler emerges from the last great lock of the Assouan dam.
