0 in the past, the part of a ship in which passengers with the cheapest tickets travelled:
She had come to America in steerage.
But the steerage is imperative because of the barren alternatives.
Steerage class passengers appear to have coped a little better with the limitations and, often, basic accommodation and provisions at the quarantine station.
Third- and steerage-class passengers, who perhaps felt disenfranchised within official and government structures, tended to confine their complaints to private letters and diaries, or to group protests, as detailed below.
During that period 5,156 aliens who arrived as steerage passengers were refused leave to land.
The expression "steerage passenger" usually covers all passengers except cabin passengers.
They provide, they say, accommodation for cabin and steerage passengers.
In the steerage there is no seating accommodation at all for passengers.
And most of the furniture has been taken from the steerage passengers to improve the conditions of the first-class passengers.
