The Story of the Teak Steamer Deck Chairs On The Titanic

Teak Deck Chairs on the Titanic: The Story of the Steamer Chair

How the ocean-liner deck chair became today’s backyard lounger, and why the wood it’s made from still matters as much as the the shape.

Picture the promenade deck of a great ocean liner in 1912. A steward in a white jacket walks a line of wooden reclining chairs, tucking wool rugs around the legs of first-class passengers and checking the small name cards that mark each seat as taken. Beyond the rail, the North Atlantic stretches to the horizon. Nobody is in a hurry. That was the whole point.

The chair those passengers were sitting in has a name: the steamer chair. More than a century later, its long reclining back, folding frame and built-in footrest are still with us. You’ll find it beside swimming pools, on beach-house porches and on country club verandas across America. Most people who sit in one today have no idea it was born at sea. This is its story, and what it tells us about choosing outdoor furniture that actually lasts.

The Golden Age of Transatlantic Travel

From the late 1800s until the jet age, crossing the Atlantic meant five to seven days aboard a steamship. For first-class travelers, those days were spent much the way you’d spend them at a fine resort: long meals, letter writing, reading, conversation and, above all, “taking the sea air” on deck.

Ordinary chairs didn’t work on a moving ship. They slid, tipped over and took up too much room when they weren’t in use. Shipping lines needed something different, and the steamer chair was the answer. It was built around a few simple ideas:

• A long, reclining back so passengers could lie back and doze in the open air for hours.
• A built-in leg rest that turned the chair into a full-length lounger without a separate footstool.
• A folding frame so crews could stack dozens of chairs flat against a bulkhead in rough weather or clear the deck in minutes.
• Sturdy hardwood construction that could take salt spray, sun and constant handling by deck stewards.

On many lines, a deck chair wasn’t simply first come, first served. Passengers paid the deck steward a small fee to rent a chair, and often a steamer rug, for the length of the voyage. The steward placed the chair in the passenger’s preferred spot and marked it with a card bearing their name. A good spot on the sheltered side of the promenade, out of the wind, was a small status symbol in itself.

The Titanic Connection

When RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton in April 1912, she was the largest and most luxurious ship in the world, and her deck chairs were part of that image. Photographs taken during her short voyage show rows of wooden steamer chairs lined up along her decks, many of them carved with the White Star Line emblem on the headrest.

For first-class passengers, those chairs were where the leisurely part of the crossing happened. They were reserved by name card, kept in place by attentive stewards and positioned for the best views of the ocean. It is hard to think of a more fitting symbol of the ship’s unhurried luxury.

The Chairs That Floated

On the night of April 14–15, those same deck chairs took on a very different role. Titanic’s chief baker, Charles Joughin, later testified that as the ship was sinking he threw dozens of deck chairs (about fifty, by his estimate) over the side so that people in the water would have something to hold on to. Many more floated free as the decks went under.

In the days that followed, the recovery ships sent out from Halifax, Nova Scotia, found deck chairs drifting among the wreckage on the surface of the Atlantic. A small number were brought back to shore and kept by crew members and their families. Today, only a handful of authenticated Titanic deck chairs are known to survive:

• One of the best known is on display at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, where visitors can also sit in a faithful reproduction.
• A deck chair recovered from the wreckage sold at auction in England in 2015 for roughly £100,000, close to $150,000 at the time.
• Others sit in private collections and are among the most prized pieces of Titanic memorabilia anywhere.

That a wooden chair could float for days in the North Atlantic and still survive more than a century later says a great deal about how seriously shipbuilders took their furniture. These chairs were built for the sea, not for a showroom.

From Ship to Shore: How the Steamer Chair Came Home

The great liners ruled the Atlantic for another half-century after Titanic. Then, in the late 1950s, jet airliners began crossing the ocean in hours instead of days. By the end of the 1960s, the age of the transatlantic liner was effectively over. The ships were retired, scrapped or turned into cruise vessels and floating hotels.

The steamer chair didn’t disappear with them. Its design was simply too good to lose. Wealthy travelers who had spent their crossings stretched out on deck wanted that same feeling at home, and the chair quietly moved from ship to shore:

• Seaside resorts and country clubs adopted it for their verandas and pool decks, bringing a touch of the first-class promenade to dry land.
• Coastal homes along New England, the Mid-Atlantic and Florida put steamer chairs on porches facing the same ocean the liners once crossed.
• The American backyard patio, which boomed after World War II, made the reclining lounger a household staple.

Today the word “steamer” still appears in furniture catalogs, often on loungers that have lost any real connection to the original. The silhouette survived. The engineering, in many cases, did not.

Why Ships Trusted Teak

To understand what makes a steamer chair worth owning, look at what shipbuilders chose for the hardest-working parts of their vessels. While many mass-produced deck chairs of the era were made from varnished hardwoods such as beech or oak, often with caned seats, the finest ships and yachts of the period relied on teak wherever wood had to face the weather head-on: decks, handrails, hatch covers and trim.

Teak earned that role for practical reasons, not decorative ones:

• Natural oils: Mature teak heartwood is rich in natural oils and rubber-like compounds that repel water. Saltwater, rain and sea spray can’t easily soak in, so the wood resists rot.
• Dimensional stability: Teak shrinks and swells far less than most woods as humidity changes, so it doesn’t warp, twist or loosen at the joints.
• Sun resistance: Under strong sun, teak doesn’t turn brittle. It simply mellows to a soft silver-gray.
• Pest resistance: The same oils that keep out water also discourage insects and marine borers.

Navies came to the same conclusion. (We cover that story in why the U.S. Navy decked its battleships in teak.) Today, teak is still the standard for luxury yacht decks and marine-grade teak furniture for yachts and docks. If a material can survive years on the open ocean, a backyard patio is easy by comparison.

The Cheap Knockoff Problem

Here’s where the story takes a turn. Search online for a “steamer chair” today and you’ll find hundreds of options, many at surprisingly low prices. They look the part. Most of them are not built for life outdoors.

The most common shortcuts include:

• Acacia: Attractive when new, but it lacks teak’s oil content. Left outside, it tends to crack, gray unevenly and need frequent oiling to survive.
• Eucalyptus: Inexpensive and fast-growing, but prone to checking, splitting and rot when exposed to rain and sun season after season.
• Grade C (and B) teak: Cut from the outer sapwood or from young trees, this “teak” is lighter in color and much lower in natural oils. It can legally be sold as “solid teak,” but it doesn’t behave like the real thing.
• Plated or zinc hardware: On a folding chair, the hinges and pivot points do the most work. Cheap hardware rusts, stains the wood and eventually seizes or fails.

The result is a chair that looks like a classic steamer in the photo and starts to warp, splinter or wobble after a summer or two. That completely misses the point. The steamer chair was invented for the harshest outdoor setting there is. A version that can’t handle a backyard rainstorm isn’t really a steamer chair at all.

A good rule of thumb: if a seller only says “solid teak” and never mentions the grade, it’s probably not Grade A. Our guide to Grade A, B and C teak explains the differences in detail.

The Windsor Teak Standard: First-Class Comfort, Built for the Elements

At Windsor Teak, our showroom sits one block from the Atlantic Ocean in Fenwick Island, Delaware. We see every day what salt air, sea breezes and strong summer sun do to outdoor furniture. That’s why every steamer we sell is built the way the original deck chairs should have been: as a piece of marine equipment, not a disposable patio accessory.

What Goes Into Every Windsor Teak Steamer

• 100% Grade A teak heartwood: Harvested from sustainably managed plantations after the trees have grown for 45 to 50 years, so the natural oils run all the way through the wood. Only the heart of the tree is used.
• Kiln-dried, not air-dried: The teak is dried to an optimal 8–12% moisture content before construction, which reduces cracking, splitting and warping for decades.
• Marine-grade stainless steel hardware: The folding joints and recline mechanism won’t rust, stain or seize, even in coastal air.
• Mortise-and-tenon joinery: The same time-tested joint used by shipwrights, for a frame that stays tight year after year.
• A finish you choose, or none at all: Grade A teak needs no finish. Left natural, it weathers to the classic silver patina you see on old yacht decks. If you prefer the honey-gold color, it’s easy to maintain with a cleaner or an optional teak protection finish.

The Stafford Steamer: A Modern Descendant of the Promenade Deck

Our Stafford reclining folding steamer lounger is the closest thing to a first-class deck chair you can put on your own patio. It keeps every feature that made the original design work at sea:

• Reclining back that moves from upright reading to a full laid-back rest.
• Fold-down ottoman built into the frame, just like the original steamer leg rest.
• Folds flat for easy storage at the end of the season or when you need the space.
• Arrives fully assembled, so it’s ready to use the day it’s delivered.
• Size: 64″ long, 23″ wide and 39″ high, and about 34 lbs, slim enough for balconies, porches and narrower decks.
• Optional Sunbrella steamer cushions, the outdoor fabric known for resisting fading, stains and mildew.

If you prefer a chair that sits a little more upright, the Chelsea reclining folding armchair with footstool offers five recline positions and a separate footstool in the same Grade A teak. You can see all of our steamer and lounger styles in our Grade A teak loungers and steamers collection.

Where a Steamer Chair Works Best Today

The steamer chair’s shipboard roots make it unusually versatile. Because it folds, reclines and takes up less room than a full chaise lounge, it fits places a bulkier lounger can’t:

• Oceanfront and bay-front homes, where salt air ruins lesser woods (see our guide to premium teak furniture for salt-air homes).
• Pool decks, where furniture gets splashed every day of the summer.
• Covered porches and verandas, for the classic country club look.
• Boats, docks and yacht decks, bringing the steamer chair back to where it began.
• Resorts, hotels and beach clubs, where furniture has to survive heavy use. Hospitality and design professionals can learn about volume pricing through our Windsor Teak Trade program.

Caring for a Teak Steamer Chair

One of the best things about Grade A teak is how little it asks of you. A few simple habits will keep a steamer chair looking good for generations:

• Leave it outside year-round if you like. Grade A teak is made for the weather. Folding it and storing it under cover in winter is optional, not required.
• Wash it a few times a season with warm, soapy water and a soft brush, scrubbing with the grain.
• Let it go silver, or bring back the gold. A teak cleaner and a light rinse will restore the original color whenever you want it.
• Don’t worry about small surface checks. Teak breathes with the seasons, and fine cracks often close up again on their own within weeks.

For full instructions, see our teak care and characteristics guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a steamer chair?

A steamer chair is a long, reclining wooden lounger with a built-in leg rest, originally designed for the promenade decks of ocean liners and steamships in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Most versions fold flat for storage.

What were the Titanic’s deck chairs made of?

Titanic’s deck chairs were sturdy hardwood steamer chairs, many of them carved with the White Star Line emblem on the headrest. Several were recovered floating in the Atlantic after the sinking, and only a handful of authenticated examples survive today in museums and private collections.

Where can I see a real Titanic deck chair?

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, displays an authentic Titanic deck chair recovered in 1912, along with a reproduction visitors can sit in.

What’s the difference between a steamer chair and a chaise lounge?

A chaise lounge usually has a fixed frame and lies close to the ground. A steamer chair sits a little higher, has a reclining back with a fold-down leg rest and folds flat, so it takes up less space and is easier to store.

What is the best wood for an outdoor steamer chair?

Grade A teak heartwood is the best choice. Its natural oils resist water, rot, insects and sun damage, and it stays stable through changing weather. Acacia, eucalyptus and lower grades of teak cost less but are far more likely to warp, crack or splinter outdoors.

Can a teak steamer chair stay outside all year?

Yes. Grade A teak can stay outdoors in every season. Left untreated, it weathers to a silver-gray patina without losing strength. Folding and storing it in winter simply keeps it cleaner.

Bring the Promenade Deck Home

The first-class passengers on Titanic’s promenade deck understood something we sometimes forget: the best way to enjoy the outdoors is to slow down in a chair built for it. The steamer chair was designed for wind, salt and sun, and the material that stands up to those conditions best is the same one shipbuilders trusted for generations.

Explore our Grade A teak steamer loungers, call us at 877-323-8325 (TEAK), or visit our Fenwick Island showroom, one block off the Atlantic in sales-tax-free Delaware.