Today, we measure ships in gross tonnage (GT) and Titanic would weigh in at 39,640 GT. When she first sailed, Olympic was the largest ship in the world, only to be replaced by the Titanic with 46,328 GRT, the result of adding a steel enclosure to her A deck promenade. Library of CongressĮight hundred and eight-two feet long, Olympic had a beam of 92 feet and gross registered tonnage (GRT) of 45,324. The Titanic and the Olympic under construction at Harland & Wolff in Belfast, 1910. Her trip to Liverpool was timed to coincide with the launching of her younger sister, Titanic, back in Belfast. White Star paid £3 million for the two ships plus a 5% fee and "extras to contract." Olympic was launched in October 1910, spent the next eight months being fitted out and first sailed from Belfast to Liverpool in May 1911. Give the scale of the Olympic and Titanic, Harland & Wolff had to combine three existing slipways into two larger ones and employ 3000 men to build the ships. The first ship in this new class would be the Olympic, followed by Titanic (1912) and Britannic (1915).Īll three ships were constructed in Belfast by Harland & Wolff who had been building ships for White Star since the 1860s. Consequently, White Star commissioned a new class of liners which would be bigger than anything that had gone before and would be the last word in comfort and opulence. Bruce Ismay, decided his company would concentrate on economies of scale and luxury. In 1906, White Star’s rival, Cunard, launched the two fastest passenger ships in the world, the Lusitania and Mauretania. Library of Congressīoth Titanic and Olympic were part of the White Star fleet and built to compete for the lucrative transatlantic passenger business in the early 20 th century. Postcard of the Olympic, circa 1913-1920.
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