Most steam ships at the time had sails as well as their steam engines. This meant that they could use much of the same techniques sailing vessels used to avoid storm damage; the steam engines allowed more flexibility. Steam engines made it easier for ships to steer clear of a 'lee shore' - where the wind is blowing a ship towards a shore or reef. For a sailing ship to avoid this is difficult, as it cannot easily manoeuvre towards the wind. A steam ship could do so, as long as it had steam up. A good example of this is the Samoa typhoon of 1889. Samoa was a territory claimed by both Germany and America, and both countries had dispatched squadrons to Samoa to press their claim; the British had also sent the corvette Calliope to represent their interests. The American, German and British squadrons were all in Apia harbour on 15th March 1889, when the island was struck by a cyclone. The seven ships attempted to ride it out in harbour, but the winds steadily increased. At nightfall the next day, the captain of Calliope, Henry Kane, became sufficiently worried by the storm to make for open waters. Even with several anchors out, and with the engines working to hold her in place, she was at risk of being carried onto the reef, and she had nearly sustained collisions with a number of the other, less well-secured vessels. As she steamed towards the open sea, she was making revolutions for 15 knots, but was only travelling at 0.5 knots relative to the ground. After a long fight, she was able to make it out of harbour and run before the storm. When she returned to the harbour, four days later, every other ship in the harbour was aground.

Some steam ships were bad at surviving storms even with the advantage of a steam engine. Most of these were warships, in particular those fitted with turrets. The turrets of the time were heavy things, and ships carrying them could not carry them high up without risking capsize. This meant that turret ships were either dangerously unstable or had low freeboards (distance between waterline and deck). As a result, they were highly vulnerable to storms. Monitors had low freeboards. The name ship of the type, the USS Monitor, would sink in a storm off Cape Hatteras in December 1862, as waves broke over her deck. Water began to flood the ship, and she sank with the loss of 16 people. The British Captain, designed by an amateur naval architect (who had designed the turrets she used), sank while under sail in a relatively light wind in 1870. She was highly unstable, thanks to her turrets and masts, and had a relatively low freeboard to boot. The ship was with the fleet off Cape Finisterre, when a 9.5 knot wind sprung up. This was sufficient to put her lee rail underwater. As the wind increased to somewhere above Beaufort Force 6-7, she capsized quickly, before her captain could order her halyards cut and put her before the wind under steam.