steerage

plural steerages

1. uncountableThe art of steering.
2. countableThe section of a passenger ship that provided inexpensive accommodation with no individual cabins.

   It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep, For there's near a hundred for'ard, and they're stowed away like sheep

   1896, Henry Lawson, For`ard

   2 more examples

   Hope was alive again in my breast, and I looked about me with greater coolness. I noted that the boats were missing. The steerage told the same tale as the forecastle. The hunters had packed their belongings with similar haste. The Ghost was deserted. It was Maud's and mine. I thought of the ship's stores and the lazarette beneath the cabin, and the idea came to me of surprising Maud with something nice for breakfast.

   1904, Jack London, chapter 32, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC

   “I have visited my quarters, and find them very comfortable.[…]Steerage is like everything else maritime[…]vastly improved since Robert Louis Stevenson took his trip third class to New York.”

   1913, Robert Barr, chapter 1, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad

3. countableThe effect of the helm on a ship.