Victorian Times

The way I see it, dirigible and Zeppelin are related the same way as car and Ford.

I doubt that anyone will comment on any inaccuracies. Any story I set in another era is loaded with inaccuracies, and no one has ever said anything about those inaccuracies...

Dirigible are usually core steampunk. Feel free to set your story there. Maybe on a dirigible, with a young lady stowing away to follow her boyfriend on his adventures? After being discovered she faces the captain's justice.

For now I am working with 'Steampunk - Growing up is hard' as a working title.
Main characters are:
- Margaret a 6th form girls' college student who lives in walking distance at home and has a mean streak. Her father is a rich merchant (yearly income between 2,500 and 5,000 pounds sterling). She has a brother who lords over her and her indifferent younger sister.
and
- Richard the 2nd son of a well situated and lenient Baron. His prospects are dim since he is only the backup for his older brother and can expect to act as steward for his brother in his later life.
That is where I let Steampunk and playing too much 'Railroad Tycoon' hit the story. Even underage at 8 and 10 years on Earth he has a large network of 2nd sons and is well off himself. Besides his brother he has a gentle sister.

Well a central part of the story will be the situation of girls being thought of hardly anything but breeding stock. Not that 2nd sons are much better off, but at least they can own property including a wife.
In part one Margaret has her appearance including a show of how she fares at school and how she entertains herselt while part 2 will introduce Richard who adresses her in the street and consequently is put into his place when he addresses her without being introduced first. She might talk to his brother but not to a 2nd born brat. It's not hard to understand that someone she might be interested in, wouldn't visit the boys' brother college of her girls' college. As a result he starts to think about revenge (it's nice to have a network of friends)...

The 'Finishing School' series by Gail Carriger are Steampunk novels set in a finishing school for young ladies aboard a giant dirigible. The twist is that the girls are being prepared for a career in espionage, so as well as being taught skills such as 'eyelash fluttering', 'how to escape from werewolves using a scent-spray and an evening fan' and 'the correct method of fainting in a crowded ballroom so that the bachelor whose attention one is trying to attract is the one who catches you', they are also taught how to 'finish' anyone who gets in their way!

I'm sure some useful hints about Steampunk-era girls' schooling could be picked up from them!

Seconding that from Myrkassi, and also the same author’s Parasol Proteciorate series, although that deals more with vampire and werewolf relations and how they fit into Gail’s steampunk world.

We call them blimps in the United States. I saw the Goodyear Blimp up close at the US Open I was working there for the week managing a buffet in a large room at the country club. They are huge and cast an ominous shadow. The dirigible Hindenburg which blew up and burned in Lakehurst, New Jersey discouraged the use of Zeppelins for transportation.

A dirigible (with a rigid frame) and a blimp* (essentially a big balloon with no frame) are not the same thing. Dirigilbles, at least earlier ones, used the lighter (and therefore more bouyant, but also flammable - thus the Hindenburg disaster) hydrogen gas, while blimps use inert (and therefore safer) helium.

* also an LSF author, and one-time frequent post-er in the Forum.

Yes. The word 'blimp' was originally an abbreviation of 'balloon, limp' in army equipment lists - or so I've heard.
They were inflated with helium because their main purpose was to act as an obstacle to enemy aircraft; they didn't need the extra lift of hydrogen, as they weren't carrying a load, and being filled with a flammable gas would have made them much easier to destroy.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation.
The Gettysburg Address, 1863

Yes, Eightscore years ago, people did count differently.

Not quite. The 'Georgian' period is also reckoned to include the reign of William IV (1830-37), who succeeded his brother George IV, and was the last British monarch who was also King of Hanover. Through he fathered numerous children none of the survivors was legitimate, so upon his death the succession passed to his niece, Queen Victoria. The Spectator's obituary of William: "His late Majesty, though at times a jovial and, for a king, an honest man, was a weak, ignorant, commonplace sort of person."

The 'Georgian' period therefore ran from 1714 to 1837.

I know a very late reply.

I am aware that the Zeppelin is a subcategory of the dirigible and most were build as freighters for the route

Germany - London

I once saw a TV documentary why Zeppelins were successful in delivering their payload at first. It was contrary to what you learned at school about Hydrogen gas. We learned H2 has a large range of acting explosive (also named Knallgas('bang' gas) but the English had to realize that incendiary ammunition was useless against Zeppelins at first. Only after they added only a few shots of tracer ammunition to standard rounds it worked. Once the H2 cells leaked the H2 could mix with the O2 and the mixture was explosive. Once the miracle was solved I wouldn't want to be on the crew of a Zeppelin.
The Hindenburg was Zeppelin number 129 I think. If you compare this number to the 25 English dirigibles you might realize why Germans think of 'Starrluftschiffen'(dirigibles) as Zeppelins. Count Zeppelin had his factory near lake Constance. If you buy a map in Austria, Germany or Switzerland it's called Bodensee (Groundsea). The only explanation I can make up is that the city of Konstanz lies at the lake. The name might derive from 'Konstanze' (Constance)(?).