The intense rivalry between Queen Mary and Normandie became far more than just a speed competition between two ships. It became a clash of national wills. Financed by the French government Normandie was sleek, modern and served as giant floating ambassador for France and French style in the 1930s. The stolid, sturdy and old-fashioned Queen Mary symbolised Britain’s long-established maritime supremacy. By 1937 however, it was Queen Mary leading the race both in terms of speed (averaging 32 knots across the Atlantic) and in profits. Cunard ordered a sister ship, the Queen Elizabeth, to cement this commercial dominance. As Queen Elizabeth neared completion in January 1940, Cunard’s rivals Compagnie Generale Transatlantique (CGT) placed the order for their counter-challenge, Bretagne.
CGT was taking no chances with Bretagne. After Normandie was conclusively proven to be slower than Queen Mary, CGT directors demanded that Bretagne should be capable of achieving at least 35 knots. The new ship was also intended to literally overshadow the Cunard queens. Bretagne would be longer than Normandie, and significantly larger; surviving plans anticipated a colossal tonnage of 100,000.
CGT turned to Normandie’s designer, Vladimir Yourkevitch, to draw up plans for Bretagne. Yourkevitch, a young Russian naval architect who fled to France after 1917, was just as obsessed as Norman Bel Geddes with streamlining. Unlike Geddes, he actually got to build his design, to great acclaim. Normandie’s sleek welded hull, teardrop funnels and smooth superstructure were years ahead of typical ship design in the 1930s.
Vladimir Yourkevitch with models of his Normandie design, c. 1934.
He planned to take this even further with the Bretagne project. He drew up two plans for the new superliner. The first design was essentially a larger version of Normandie, with only two funnels instead of three. The second was bold and revolutionary. In this design, Bretagne would have a single funnel, split into two up the sides of the vessel. This would create vastly more deck and interior space. Yourkevitch planned to capitalise on this space, and included a massive glazed area on the top deck, to be filled with however many a la carte restaurants and luxury suites CGT wished. Yourkevitch also stressed to CGT bosses that the radical new design would further boost Bretagne’s planned speed and would virtually guarantee a transatlantic triumph over the Cunard queens.
The first, more conservative design for Bretagne. The second radical design is at the top of the page.
Yourkevitch was surprised, if not totally devastated, when CGT directors branded his ideas “trop futuriste” and instead approved the first, more conservative design. CGT scrambled to raise money for the project. Normandie’s construction had been funded by loans and subsidies from the French government, but the company had paid nothing back by 1940. Despite this, company executives were astonishingly confident (some would say utterly deluded) their government would step to finance the nation’s new flagship. Planning for Bretagne, and CGT’s attempts to secure funding came to an abrupt end in May 1940. The German invasion, collapse of the French Republic, and the subsequent occupation of CGT’s port of Le Harve for the next four years killed the Bretagne project in its cradle. By the time war finally ended, CGT had lost Normandie in a catastrophic fire in New York. Building Bretagne was now ultimately pointless and the project was officially cancelled in late 1945.
Model of Bretagne’s radical second design, showing the enormous glazed top deck.
It is doubtful that Bretagne would have been a success if war had not broken out. Despite Normandie’s iconic nature, the ship was unprofitable and expensive to run; the even larger Bretagne would have been much the same. However, Bretagne’s second, radical design was very much ahead of its time and proved an accurate depiction of the future, with most cruise ships bearing a close similarity to Yourkevitch’s bold, but doomed, plan.
5) Amerika/Viktoria (1940)
Just as Bretagne, and indeed France, were being crushed in 1940, so Nazi Germany’s own superliner project was being perfected. Victorious in Europe, Hitler was at the height of his power in the summer of 1940, and believed that an enormous and fast passenger liner would be the key to securing the international prestige of the Third Reich.
The project dated back to 1937 when the Nazi government invited proposals from German shipping lines for ship designs which would boost Germany’s national prestige. Representatives from North German Lloyd (NDL) travelled to Berlin and presented to government ministers plans for (the surprisingly named, given the rabid nationalism of Nazi Germany) Amerika. The reichministers were pleased that NDL had understood their brief; Amerika was to be 1075 feet long and would weigh at least 80,000 tonnes. Much like CGT and Bretagne, NDL aimed for Amerika to travel at 35 knots, securing the honour of the fastest transatlantic crossing for Germany.
Amerika – this design includes the large yellow observation room in place of a crow’s nest.
Amerika’s design seemed initially similar to Bretagne. The ship would be sleek and streamlined and would feature a single funnel. Unlike Bretagne, this funnel would be massive and imposing. A novel element of the design was a large box-like structure instead of a crow’s nest which could act as an observation station for the captain. Amerika’s most radical departure was in its engineering. NDL’s engineers calculated that to achieve 35 knots, a massive output of 300,000 horsepower would be required. Consequently, Amerika would need huge engines and an unprecedented five propellers to generate sufficient horsepower. The fuel costs would have been immense, but the government was content to throw money at the project in the quest to establish German greatness on the high seas.
Tourist poster circulated in America c. 1938. A desire to present Nazi Germany as a sophisticated and attractive destination lay at the heart of the Nazis’ superliner project.
At the outbreak of war, the project was suspended. But with the German victories in 1940, and the seemingly inevitable defeat of Britain, Nazi leaders once more looked to the nascent superliner project as a way to cement the Third Reich as Europe’s new superpower. The ship was renamed Viktoria in order to celebrate military success but also to cater to Hitler’s increasing hostility to the USA and it’s material support for a beleaguered Britain. Plans briefly proceeded again and even a model was built and tested in Bremerhaven. However, by the autumn of 1940 it was clear that Britain was in no way defeated, and thus no end to the war was in sight. With the high seas blocked to German commercial ships, the Viktoria project was put on hold. Within a few years, Nazi Germany would be engulfed by the fires of war and the Amerika/Viktoria project disappeared into oblivion.
If ever completed, the launch of Amerika/Viktoria would have inevitably become another grand Nazi propaganda event, like this launch in 1938.
We have no way of knowing what Amerika/Viktoria would have been like if completed. But given the nature of building projects in Nazi Germany, it is not hard to imagine the Amerika/Viktoria; vast, stark and imposing, designed to reduce and overawe the individual. Despite never progressing beyond a model, the ambition of Amerika/Viktoria gives a glimpse of the hubris of a fascist regime at the height of its power.
Coming in Part 3: Nukes, Universities and Cities… all afloat!
Any history buff or liner enthusiast will be familiar with the names of some of the world’s greatest ships. Titanic, Lusitania, Queen Mary, Normandie and United States are just some of these great vessels that have gone down in history as either tragic disasters or triumphs of engineering. But liners such as these may not have been so venerated if the plans of shipping companies around the world had come to fruition. Throughout the 20th Century, vessels were planned, designed, and even partially built which could have rivalled or even eclipsed the most famous of ocean liners. That they remained either plans on a drawing board or a collection of unassembled steel plates is a testament to the unpredictable nature of world events and particularly the destructive nature of the 20th Century.
1) Constitution (1916)
America came very close to building its own superliner decades before the famed United States of 1952. Ironically, the man who designed the pioneering United States was also the force behind a similar, stalled attempt in the early 1900s to spread the stars and stripes across the seas. William Francis Gibbs was fascinated with ships since childhood and despite lacking any formal training, became obsessed with naval architecture and grew up determined to one day design the ultimate ocean liner. Aged 30, he quit his legal career and joined with (some would say dragged along) his brother to design a then unheard of 1,000 ft long ship which he intended to submit to financiers. Essentially enthusiastic amateurs, the brothers Gibbs must have been amazed when both J.P. Morgan and the United States Navy offered to jointly finance their liner, tentatively given the not-exactly-thrilling name of Constitution.
William Francis (left) and Francis William (right) Gibbs (really!) c. 1919.
It was not hard to see why Morgan and the Navy were interested in Gibbs’ childhood dream. Constitution would have been an enormous vessel at 56,000 tonnes, and would have more than filled a recent Titanic-shaped hole in Morgan’s International Mercantile Marine company, which had financed the doomed liner. The fact that Constitution seemed to be modelled on (if not outright copied) from the Titanic’s design helped to convince Morgan representatives to sign off on the planned ship after just one meeting with Gibbs. The Navy also saw the advantages of having partial control over Constitution which would have travelled at a staggering 30 knots, a speed which no ship would exceed until 1936. Such a fast ship at the nation’s disposal could be advantageous if the United States were sucked into the war raging in Europe at the time.
It was the First World War which first stalled Gibbs’ grandiose plans. Although a large-scale model was built and tested in late 1916, the USA’s entry into the war in 1917 put a halt on any work relating to Constitution. The Navy’s attention shifted to warship construction and Morgan’s finances suffered as a result of the conflict, putting paid to any prospect of any investment into huge superliners.
Gibbs single-mindedly continued to work on the designs and lobbied for financial support to start work on Constitution. He had hoped that the end of the war in November 1918, and the USA’s new status as a world power would see a resurgence of interest in his beloved superliner. But suddenly Gibbs’ plans became irrelevant; the USA simply seized Germany’s largest liner, Vaterland, as war reparations. Renamed Leviathan, the former German vessel was only a little smaller and slower than the planned Constitution and only needed peacetime conversion to become America’s flagship. A quick and cheap conversion of an already functioning liner clearly outweighed the prospect of building an amateur’s design from scratch.
Leviathan (formerly Vaterland), the cheaper alternative to Constitution.
Gibbs would never give up on his dream of building America’s finest ship and developed his skills as a naval architect over the following decades. By 1950, he had the expertise as well as the passion and was well-placed to again approach the Navy, this time with his design for the legendary United States. Although Constitution had never really progressed beyond a test model, for Gibbs it was a very real project which taught him a lot of lessons, launched him on a path to a career as a successful maritime architect and ultimately, helped to eventually fulfil his childhood dream.
An older and wiser Gibbs looking at his masterpiece, SS United States.
2) Oceanic (1928)
Whilst the fierce rivalry on the Atlantic between ocean greyhounds Queen Mary and Normandie is well known and considered to be the golden age of the liner, it is less well known that the two giant ships were very nearly faced with a third rival. This lesser known third rival also has the distinction of being the only ship listed here on which construction actually began. As a result, White Star’s Oceanic is far more than just a forgotten set of plans and potentially could have transformed the history of transatlantic travel.
Ever since the Titanic disaster, her owners, the White Star Line, had limped along, their prestige and profits severely damaged by the unprecedented tragedy. White Star had lost a large portion of their fleet in the First World War and although the line joined Lord Kyslant’s shipping consortium in the 1920s, it was haemorrhaging money by the middle of the decade. The line’s directors were desperate; only a spectacular new flagship could stave off financial ruin and restore confidence in the company.
Initial plans didn’t tick the spectacular box. The first design for Oceanic (the third White Star ship to bear the name) was essentially a copy of the company’s Olympic – already 15 years old by this point. A second set of designs showed a more radical vessel, with a cruiser stern and squat funnels, but the projected size was only about 51,000 tonnes.
The third design for Oceanic; now at last suitably impressive for White Star.
A third set of plans finally gave White Star what they were looking for. Oceanic would retain the cruiser stern and three squat funnels, but would be a colossal 1050 feet long and weigh over 80,000 tonnes. Most significantly, it was intended the ship would have a service speed of 30 knots, and thus able to make the transatlantic crossing in less than 4 days. White Star’s directors, along with the head of the consortium, Lord Kyslant, were elated and placed the order with Harland & Wolff shipyard on June 18th 1928; construction began just ten days later. The date and rapidity of the work is especially significant as it gave White Star a valuable lead in the race to build the world’s greatest liner. Their rivals, Cunard and Compagnie Generale Transatlantique (CGT) were planning vessels of similar speed and proportions to Oceanic. These vessels, which would later become the Queen Mary and the Normandie, were still just sets of blueprints as Harland & Wolff’s workers were busy hammering rivets into Oceanic’s steel plates. It seemed inevitable that Oceanic would be the first of these huge, fast liners to debut and thus dominate the market.
Size comparison between Oceanic, Normandie and Queen Mary.
But Oceanic never debuted. It was often assumed that the Oceanic was one of the first high-profile victims of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The same financial crisis and subsequent Depression would see work stall on Cunard’s Queen Mary for almost 3 years. Work eventually resumed on Queen Mary; Oceanic was consigned to oblivion. The abrupt cancellation of the vessel actually predated the Wall Street Crash and was the responsibility of the ship’s (and White Star’s) owner, Lord Kyslant. Kyslant delayed progress on Oceanic just a few weeks after the ship’s keel was laid, arguing that the vessel should be fitted with diesel-electric engines instead of steam turbines (which he had approved of in the planning stages). After bitter arguments with Harland and Wolff’s exasperated designers, Kyslant won the argument, and wasted almost two months in the process. At the same time, it was discovered that Kyslant’s shipping combine was essentially a massive fraud. A Treasury audit revealed that the combine had been using its vital reserves to pay its directors, including Kyslant himself, generous dividends. Simultaneously, Kyslant had lied about company profits to attract investors. Far from a profitable combine, Kyslant’s shipping empire was utterly bankrupt and at least £10 million in debt. No sooner than the Treasury audit was complete, Kyslant was arrested and later tried and imprisoned for fraud. The revelation that there was literally not a penny left to finance construction doomed the Oceanic.
Accurate representation of Lord Kyslant’s financial and personal fortunes by 1929.
White Star and Harland and Wolff were able to scrape together additional funds, but not enough to complete the giant Oceanic. As a result, it was decided to scrap Oceanic and scavenge the materials to build two, much smaller vessels. Oceanic’s keel was cut into two, and from the two pieces eventually emerged Britannic and Georgic. Their profiles, and especially their short funnels, give some idea of how Oceanic may have looked.
Britannic in New York at the end of her career in 1960.
Oceanic (even if she only existed as a collection of steel girders and plates) represents a great ‘what if?’ in the history of liners. Without Kyslant’s interference and then conviction, it seemed likely that Oceanic would have been completed well before Cunard’s Queen Mary and CGT’s Normandie. With a head start in the intense transatlantic competition, Oceanic may have been able to keep White Star afloat and restore its former glory. It is not inconceivable to imagine Oceanic becoming a symbol of national pride like the Queen Mary later would. Instead, four years after the cancellation of the project, an all-but ruined White Star Line was forced to merge with Cunard and thereafter the company would slowly vanish, as its fleet was gradually scrapped to way for more Cunard vessels. Oceanic was intended as the great renaissance for White Star; instead, she proved to be its downfall.
3) ‘Whale Ship’ (1932)
If Oceanic was a very real project that very nearly came to fruition, the so-called ‘Whale Ship’ was little more than an extremely imaginative pipe-dream. But although the vessel never travelled further than the planning stages, elements of the design were revolutionary would eventually found their way into a huge range of modern vehicles which we take for granted today. The bizarre ‘Whale Ship’ was simultaneously a pie in the sky and an accurate vision of the future.
The ‘Whale Ship’ was the product of the feverish imagination of Norman Bel Geddes. A Broadway musical set designer throughout the 1920s, Geddes opened up his own design studio in 1927. The studio was supposed to focus primarily on small commercial products such as cocktail shakers and radio cabinets. But quickly Geddes turned his studio into a design factory for his ever grandiose flights of fantasy. Geddes and his team began designing various fantastical projects; a bubble shaped car, a nine-deck amphibious plane, even an ultra-modern city Geddes named ‘Futurama’.
Norman Bel Geddes surveys his model of ‘Futurama’.
In 1932 Geddes showcased the model of his design for an ocean liner. His design was unlike anything yet conceived and was colossally ambitious. Resembling a giant torpedo more than a liner, Geddes dubbed his vessel the ‘Whale Ship’ due to the two giant ‘humps’ which were actually funnels, and the staggering size his ship would be. The vessel would be 1800 feet long and weigh 82,000 tonnes. Carrying 2000 passengers and 900 crew, the ship would be fast enough to reduce the journey between Europe and America to a single day.
Geddes was under no illusions. The grandiose and fantastical nature concept was unlikely to become a reality. The ‘Whale Ship’ and similar futuristic designs were mostly created to feature in Geddes’ 1932 book Horizons, presenting an art-deco-inspired view of what the future might bring. Nevertheless, the ‘Whale Ship’ captured the imagination of the public during the 1930s. Newsreels and featurettes such as the one linked below showcased Geddes’ model as the ocean liner of the future and took pride in extolling the speed benefits of its innovations.
Posters and postcards heralding the ambitious designs of the future were popular in the 1930s.
Geddes’ design may never have sailed, but it did travel to Hollywood. The ‘Whale Ship’ (or at least a model of it) featured in the comedy film The Big Broadcast of 1938. Satirising the intense rivalry going on at the time between the Queen Mary and the Normandie, the film features a similar transatlantic speed race between the fictional ships Gigantic and Colossal. It is no coincidence that the model for Colossal is a carbon copy of the real Normandie, and Gigantic is clearly based on Geddes’ ‘Whale Ship’. Incidentally, Gigantic is shown to win the race, a screenwriting choice which hints at the popularity of Geddes’ innovative design.
The decidedly dodgy model of Geddes’ design featured in The Big Broadcast of 1938.
Geddes knew full well his ship would likely never be built. What he perhaps didn’t anticipate was that many of the features of his liner would eventually become standard on virtually every form of transport. As can be seen from the ‘Whale Ship’ model, and his other designs, Geddes was obsessed with streamlining. The ‘Whale Ship’s’ hull was designed to reduce wind and water resistance as much as possible. In the 1930s, such aerodynamics were a novel idea. Today, ships, cars and planes are all streamlined as far as possible. In particular, modern trains, especially Japan’s bullet train, owes much to Geddes’ ship design. The ‘Whale Ship’ may have never progressed beyond a series of sketches and a couple of models but it has left an important and highly visible aerodynamic legacy all around us today.
The passengers were understandably worried. As they leaned out over the rails of their own ship, a towering, grimy hulk emerged from the thick fog. Four funnels belched out black smoke against the grey of the morning mist. The mystery ship came closer and closer, as searchlights began to light up, shining down on the frightened passengers. Some of the keener individuals listened to what they heard was a voice coming via megaphone from the ghostly grey vessel. The voice grew louder and more pronounced; “You are ordered to surrender and stop your engines, we have guns trained on you. Stand by to be boarded”. A few hours later, the passengers found their positions reversed; they were now watching their own ship from the higher decks of the mysterious grey vessel. They were also now prisoners. As they watched the luggage, cargo and fuel of their own ship being hauled aboard their new prison, a stark and simple truth dawned on these bemused travellers; they were now all victims of piracy.
The mysterious pirate ship was the former express passenger liner Kronprinz Wilhelm and this fact is just one of many bizarre and almost comical elements in her saga. The idea of an iron, propeller driven steamship plying the same piratical career on the Atlantic seaway as wooden sailing ships had done in the Caribbean of the 1700s is hard to swallow. Yet this is exactly what happened for nearly a whole year in the early 20th Century.
KronprinzWilhelm, in civilian colours, c. 1910.
In August 1914, the German Norddeutscher Lloyd liner Kronprinz Wilhelm was embarking on an eastbound Atlantic crossing. A popular ship (having once hosted President Theodore Roosevelt), she was packed with many passengers returning to Germany. They received the alarming news on August 4th that their country was now at war with most of Europe. The passengers quickly discovered that their ship had received another message from Berlin; Kronprinz Wilhelm was to be incorporated into the Imperial Germany Navy with immediate effect, and was to rendezvous with the warship SMS Karlsruhe. Her passengers were to be unceremoniously loaded off onto smaller vessels nearby and ferried back to New York, where many would remain stranded for the next four years. When tied up next to the Karlsruhe, the warship’s navigating officer Paul Thierfelder came onboard. With Teutonic seriousness, he bluntly told the crew of the Kronprinz the following:
He (Thierfleder) was taking command of the liner. Kronprinz’s current captain was to give up his cabin and be demoted to first officer.
Weapons (handguns and rifles) were being brought onboard the Kronprinz. Machine guns and other long-range weapons would be installed at a later date.
The entire crew of the Kronprinz were now part of the Imperial German Navy. This included the band, chefs, masseurs and hairdressers.
The Kronprinz itself would become an auxiliary cruiser and commerce raider, raiding and sinking all ships from enemy countries.
The Kronprinz would live off Navy supply boats and whatever supplies and fuel they could steal from their targets. They were to never put into port.
As Kronprinz steamed towards the Brazilian coast, where her guns would be installed, her press-ganged crew painted the ship gunmetal grey and began emptying the ship’s luxurious public spaces; this essentially consisted of wrenching off priceless wood panelling and smashing as much plush furniture as possible so it could used as fuel for the ship’s hungry boilers. Those not engaged in ransacking the ship were trained to board other vessels, armed with whatever could be found (the head chef was presented with a sword). Before long, Kronprinz’s guns were ready (but without any ammunition), the crew was ready (as far as bewildered waiters can be), and the former liner was ready to embark on her mission to plunder the enemies of the Fatherland.
One of Kronprinz’s guns; like the rest, almost always unloaded.
And so it was on that foggy morning that the Kronprinz captured her first “prize”, the British steamer Indian Prince. The German liner’s speed and the bluff of her guns made the capture fairly straightforward. As Captain Thierfelder had intended, the British passengers and crew were taken prisoner, the cargo transferred, the precious fuel siphoned into Kronprinz’s coal bunkers. This done, Thierfelder’s boarding crew planted explosives on the boilers of Indian Prince. Detonated at a safe distance, the prisoners watched their former vessel explode and sink.
When the British prisoners were taken on board, it’s safe to assume they expected a harsh incarceration. Propaganda stories of rape, torture and murder at the hands of Germans surely fuelled their fears. Instead, as they boarded Kronprinz, they were greeted by smiling stewards and maids, offering them a cup of tea before showing them to their “cells”, the First-Class staterooms. Far from being hardened marines or ruthless pirates, the crew was, despite Thierfelder’s best efforts, still a passenger liner crew so they simply did what they did best, making their passengers/prisoners comfortable. Accommodation on the Kronprinz was often far more spacious and luxurious than the ships that prisoners had left so as bizarre as it sounds, most were surprisingly happy with the change in their fortunes. As it was made clear that they would be dropped off at the nearest neutral port, why shouldn’t the captured men, women and children (who were always given an ice cream by the cooks) enjoy a slightly extended trip on one of the fastest and most luxurious ships afloat?
Prisoners were shocked and delighted that their “prison” consisted mostly of marble and gilt.
This is not to suggest that the Kronprinz Wilhelm was essentially an enforced cruise ship. She still had her mission to complete and would go on to raid and sink fourteen craft. The boarding crews were careful to loot these ships of everything that could be of use to them, particularly the coal on which the former passenger liner depended. But the crew was also possessed of a conscience and would insist on taking every living thing off a ship before it was to be sunk or blown up. At least on one occasion, this included taking on board two dogs, seven cats and three canaries!
One of Kronprinz’s more popular passengers.
But all the cats and all the jovial customer service could not disguise what more and more of Kronprinz Wilhelm’s crew were feeling; homesickness. It had been decreed that the liner was never to put into port. This might have been tolerable for a crew of the Imperial Navy, used to months-long voyages. But to a civilian crew who were accustomed to being onboard for a week at a time, the Kronprinz’s mission was becoming their nightmare. Fatigue and pessimism set in, with one officer grimly telling yet more captured prisoners “we’re all doomed men on this ship”.
There was an even more serious problem. Unlike pirate ships and privateers of old, Kronprinz Wilhelm could not sail indefinitely using wind power. She was utterly at the mercy of coal and though she got by by looting the bunkers of other ships, her range was forever frustrated by a lack of fuel. With her limited range and mostly empty guns, the liner was forced to target the weak; freighters and small passenger vessels. The crew was horrified at the thought of meeting a British warship, which would have annihilated Kronprinz and her weak, un-armoured hull. By April 1915, 251 consecutive days at sea had taken a serious toll on Kronprinz Wilhelm and her crew. The crew was increasingly ill, and the ship, not designed to be at sea was so long, was beginning to deteriorate via electrical fires and engine malfunctions.
By April 1915, Kronprinz Wilhelm was covered in rust and seriously deteriorating.
If Captain Thierfelder harboured any dreams about becoming Germany’s greatest privateer, he abandoned them and took the sensible decision to throw in the towel and head for America to save his ailing crew. On April 11th, Kronprinz Wilhelm steamed into Norfolk, Virginia and signalled to a nearby American cruiser, asking if visas could be arranged for her crew and if the ship herself could be laid up there. Permission was granted and the crew disembarked to wait the war out over the next three years. Within two years, America itself would be at war with Germany and the Kronprinz Wilhelm would be hurriedly converted to carry American soldiers to the battlefields of Europe.
Kronprinz Wilhelm became something of a legend on the Atlantic, known popularly as the “mystery cruiser” and becoming notorious enough in Britain that it was reported sunk on several occasions. She and her crew truly were the last of the pirates, and the idea that a coal powered ocean liner could raid shipping in exactly the same way as Blackbeard had done shows just how naive and backward-looking military planners and naval officers were at the start of the First World War. Soon submarines would take Kronprinz’s role, in a pitiless and lethal campaign to destroy enemy shipping. Nevertheless, the sheer achievement and determination of the Kronprinz Wilhelm (which steamed a colossal 37,000 miles) and the bizarre but endearing humanity of her crew is a brief but fascinating moment to be admired.
As guns began to shriek across Europe, Olympic found herself at sea. Under the command of the wonderfully named Captain Herbert Haddock, the liner continued commercial sailings until White Star wisely called a halt in October 1914 (the rival Cunard failed to take heed until 1915 when its own Lusitania encountered a U-Boat with fatal consequences).
In the same month as the Lusitania disaster (an article for another day), the British Admiralty requisitioned Olympic for use a troop ship. Painted in bright dazzle camouflage and armed to the teeth with 12-pounders and 47-inch guns, Olympic was transferred to the command of the likewise wonderfully named Bertram Fox Hayes. In this new and unforeseen capacity, the liner really began to make a name for herself. Initially used to transport troops involved in the Gallipoli Campaign, Olympic quickly came to prominence when she defied Admiralty orders and risked attack to stop and save 34 survivors from a sinking French warship. Having rescued thousands of soldiers from the doomed Gallipoli Campaign, Olympic had proved her worth as an effective troopship and was transferred to ferry first Canadian, and then after 1917, American troops to Britain.
Olympic, camouflaged and carrying thousands of American troops, c. 1918.
Olympic’s career-defining moment would come in May 1918, when, in the early hours of a hazy summer morning, Captain Hayes sighted a dark oblong object in the distance. It was a dreaded U-Boat.Most ships would have fled. Olympic’s guns began firing and the bridge ordered full speed towards the submarine. Determined to ram the enemy, Olympic actually overshot the submarine; it was her starboard propeller which sliced through the U-Boat’s hull. Amazingly, the German crew was able to surface and survive, and they later confirmed they had been on the verge of torpedoing the liner when Olympic had charged them. After the war, it was discovered that there was a large dent in Olympic’s hull; investigators concluded that at some unspecified point Olympic had in fact been torpedoed but the torpedo had miraculously failed to detonate!
Olympic would go on to carry more and more troops; it is estimated that between 1914 and 1918 she transported 201,000 soldiers. This dedicated service, the strength of her hull and her defiance of enemy submarines earned her the well-deserved nickname “Old Reliable”.
Restored to her former glory after the First World War, the 1920s would become Olympic’s golden age. She became easily one of the most popular passenger vessels in the world. As the largest British-built liner to survive the war she attracted some of the most famous people of the era. Prince Edward of Wales was a frequent passenger, finding the first class facilities best suited to his expensive tastes. Charlie Chaplin, then at the height of his fame, sailed as often as he could on Olympic, and would perform his slapstick routines for third class passengers and crewmembers to raise money for charity.
Charlie Chaplin, on board Olympic, April 1921.
Changes in US Immigration Laws meant migration to the New World dropped sharply after 1922. This immediately robbed Olympic of the bulk of her passengers. White Star got around this by refitting and re-marketing Olympic as a comfortable ship for American tourists who wished to “do” Europe. White Star’s emphasis on comfort over speed attracted many doctors, students and teachers who were won over by the cheap fare and the prospect of an extra-long holiday. The third main attraction was more ghoulish; Olympic was virtually identical to the ill-fated Titanic and many passengers booked passage on Olympic as a somewhat morbid way of experiencing what Titanic’s doomed voyage would have been like (minus the Iceberg, chronic lack of lifeboats, gunshots and 1,500 fatalities).
Olympic at Southampton, c. 1928.
Olympic’s golden age quickly turned to lead with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Despite her popularity, passengers and especially the American tourists could no longer contemplate ocean voyages whilst trying to survive on the breadline. Despite repeated modernisations and refits, Olympic could not hope to capture this impoverished market and she began to sail mostly empty; operating at a loss for the first time in 1933. When passenger trade began to slowly pick up, Olympic found that she had been outclassed by newer, faster liners like the German Europa and the Italian Rex. As if to signal that the end was nigh, another fatal collision occurred. On a foggy May morning in 1934, the Olympic was on approach to New York. Steaming at full speed in fog, the Olympic happened upon the Nantucket lightship – and promptly sliced clean through the smaller vessel, killing seven of the lightship’s crew. White Star was determined to avoid negative publicity and, ignoring the fact that their liner had literally killed people, arranged for the visibly traumatised survivors to be interviewed and filmed on the deck of Olympic and awkwardly shake hands with the captain as if conceding defeat in a football match.
Olympic slicing through the Nantucket Lightship.
The enforced merger of White Star and Cunard in 1934 spelt the end for Olympic. As an outdated and expensive-to-run vessel, she was deemed surplus to requirements and sold to Sir John Jarvis, who arranged for the huge vessel to be scrapped, providing hundreds of much-needed jobs in Tyneside. Before final demolition, however, her stunning interiors were removed and auctioned off, thankfully preserving them to this very day in several pubs and hotels. In this way, Olympic is at least partially one of the longest-lived of all ships.
Olympic’s First Class Lounge – reassembled piece by piece in today’s White Swan Hotel, Alnwick.
Even among ocean liner enthusiasts, Olympic is a severely underrated vessel. She was a revolutionary ship, not just in size or luxury but also in championing the concept that speed isn’t everything. As Cunard was to later publicise, “getting there is half the fun”. With her clean lines and beautiful interiors, Olympic certainly lived up to this maxim, especially during her popular heyday in the 1920s. She survived physical collisions, the earth-shaking aftermath of the Titanic’s demise, and even World War. Olympic was a truly remarkable creation and I believe the ship deserves its place as one of the most iconic ocean liners.
It’d be easy to overlook the Royal Mail Steamer Olympic, elder sister to the infamous Titanic. Titanic (for obvious reasons) completely eclipsed Olympic. But by focussing on the doomed ship of destiny we can overlook the other, solid and safe liner which incidentally became the White Star Line’s only truly successful superliner.
The truth is that it was Olympic, not Titanic, which was the real pioneer, the true last word in luxury, the largest moving object ever built. Olympic was conceived in 1907 not only to fend off competition from the rival Cunard line but to transform the very nature of ocean travel. In the competitive transatlantic market, speed in the voyage between Europe and America was paramount; it was, after all, a commute, not a cruise. But White Star decided they would change the rules of the game with the Olympic. With the Olympic, speed would become unimportant; passenger comfort and wellbeing would mark a new era of ocean travel. White Star’s unique focus on comfort and luxury over speed would eventually mutate into the concept of cruise ships so in a sense we can say Olympic boasts a long and impressive legacy. I really could go on forever about the Olympic class liners so consider this a fairly brief two part overview of an iconic passenger ship.
It was a strange start for Olympic. Her creators were two mismatched men; the tall, thin, shy but ambitious Bruce Ismay, and the short, scruffy, genial Irishman William Pirrie. Their creation was not decided upon and drawn up in a boardroom but supposedly sketched on the napkins at Pirrie’s dinner table. To fend off competition from Cunard’s ocean greyhounds Lusitania and Mauretania, Ismay’s White Star Line and Pirrie’s Harland and Wolff Shipyard would together create the largest and most luxurious vessels yet built by man. These would be true superliners, Ismay choosing the grandiose names Olympic, Titanic and Gigantic to signify as such. But as the first ship to be built, everything would ride on the success or failure of Olympic.
The construction of the Olympic-class vessels would itself be unprecedented. Harland and Wolff had to rebuild and extend much of the shipyard to accommodate the 882-foot long vessel. Yet Olympic’s construction went extremely smoothly and the liner was ready for delivery to White Star on the 31st of May 1911, coincided by the company to be the same date as Titanic’s launch. This was followed by Olympic being sailed to Liverpool where paying members of the press and public could come aboard and tour the new ship; the publicity machine was going all out.
Olympic on display: Liverpool, June 2nd 1911.
Olympic, so the newspapers praised, was “cleaner” than other ships with its brilliant white superstructure and towering buff funnels, “safer” than other ships thanks to the double hull and a “floating palace” with the no-expense spared luxury of her interiors. I’ll discuss the Olympic-class interiors in a separate article but they were, and remain, some of the most well-crafted and beautiful rooms ever to be seen on the Atlantic. Suffice to say, passengers flocked to her.
And so on a brilliant summer’s day, June 14th 1911, Olympic set out from White Star’s new Southampton port bound for New York. It was a major news event and drew considerable press attention; so much so that motion picture cameras were there to film the great ship’s departure, as well as film her commander, Captain Edward John Smith, resplendent and confident in his crisp white uniform, casually telling reporters that his vessel could quite literally be cut in half and still float. The ship received a warm welcome from a packed New York shore just a few days later on an equally sunny day. It seemed Olympic’s place in the sun was secure.
Olympic arriving in New York for the first time, June 21st 1911.
The sun set far sooner than anyone could have imagined. Barely two months after her maiden voyage, Olympic’s huge size (an unprecedented 45,000 tonnes) caused an unfortunate warship, HMS Hawke, to be sucked towards the liner. The warship’s sharp prow tore into Olympic’s side, ripping a huge hole in the hull of White Star’s flagship and it was only sheer luck that nobody was killed.
Olympic after the Hawke collision, October 1911.
After costly repairs, things grew even darker. Within the year, Captain Smith had vanished into the abyss with Olympic’s sister, Titanic. That disaster (an article for another day) almost ruined White Star. When it became known that a lack of lifeboats had resulted in 1,500 deaths on Titanic, and when it further became known that White Star would only provide cheap extra collapsible boats and rafts for the identical Olympic, her anxious crew were understandably horrified. When a Board of Trade official (the same Board of Trade that said the Titanic only required 16 boats for up to 3000 people) desperately claimed the collapsibles were seaworthy, Olympic’s crew mutinied and refused to sail! It would take almost another year or costly repairs, consisting of raised watertight compartments, a higher and thicker double hull and 44 more lifeboats before Olympic would be able to put to sea with a semblance of her former confidence.
The world Olympic was tentatively sailing around was about to be engulfed by the First World War. It was in the years 1914 – 1918 that Olympic’s fame would truly be found and her long legacy forged.
Hi everyone and welcome to The Only Way to Cross. If the title, pictures and nautical puns (get used to these) haven’t already given it away then this blog will be focussed primarily on the era of transatlantic travel and the great ocean liners.
I always find it mind-blowing that today we can fly to America in an average-sized and thus not particularly impressive plane and land in about 8 hours; just several decades ago we would have had no choice but to travel in a ship weighing up to 80,000 tonnes and arrived in four days… if lucky. The contrast doesn’t end there. In a plane the only events you’re likely to remember is the cabin crew spilling your coffee or a fellow flyer’s obnoxious snoring. In the sometimes week-long Atlantic voyages, friendships would be made, rivalries formed, storms survived and reputations made or destroyed (or even sunk). In short, this lost epoch became both it’s own unique time and was inextricably interwoven with much of modern history.
I grew up and still live near the port of Liverpool, a city which has been moulded by almost a century of transatlantic travel and after seeing Titanic (1997) aged five years old, I began a lifelong obsession with similar great ships. As an adult, I am still fascinated by them and have a passion for the sea and how it has created the modern, cosmopolitan and globalised world we live in.
I’m aiming to fill this blog with a variety of features; individual ship profiles, stories about famous and infamous seafarers and individuals or even just the odd article about Liverpool and it’s maritime culture. Hopefully fellow liner enthusiasts, local history buffs or Titanic fans will find something of interest.
There’s no course charted so who knows where this will end up! Stay tuned for updates…
The Only Way to Cross 