Origins Of The Olympic Class

According to popular legend, the Olympic class liners were conceived in 1907 when J. Bruce Ismay, President and Managing Director of The White Star Line and its parent company International Mercantile Marine (I.M.M.) visited the London home of Viscount Pirrie who controlled Harland & Wolff, the firm which constructed most of the line’s vessels. The rival Cunard Line had recently launched two ships, Lusitania and Mauretania, which eclipsed every other passenger liner  on the Atlantic routes in terms of both speed and luxury. White Star had to respond to the challenge posed by the speedy new 26 knot, turbine-driven Cunarders if it wished to effectively compete for passengers.

Harland & Wolff had, in fact, reorganised its yards to enable the construction of much larger ships well in advance of Ismay and Pirrie's meeting; but it's more than likely that White Star's next generation of liners was the prime topic of their discourse that night.

Cunard's new liners had been built with the aid of a subsidy from the Admiralty. In return for the financial assistance, the powerplants of both liners complied with Royal Navy specifications and they could be swiftly converted into armed merchantmen in the event of war. 

Ismay well understood the factors which attracted people to the most successful liners - speed, reliability, overtly opulent conditions, convenience and prestige. White Star placed less importance on speed than Cunard, having judged that the extra fuel consumption of turbine engines cut into profit margins to an unacceptable degree, but it was decided to combine one turbine engine (driving a central propeller) with two of the older reciprocating type engines (driving port and starboard propellers) in order to achieve a moderately good speed and still exercise economy on coal costs.

The first two Olympic class liners were to be the largest man-made moveable objects ever constructed. Each would be half as big again as Cunard’s wonder ships, about 100 feet longer and much more luxurious. With an anticipated overall length of 882.5 feet (92.5 feet at the beam), they would tower 60.5 feet from waterline to boat deck and 100.5 feet from the keel to the boat deck. The tops of each of the funnels would be 75 feet above the boat deck, and the masts would be almost twice as tall as the funnels. If Olympic (or its ill-fated sister Titanic) was to sail to New York today, it would not be able to reach the pier where it was berthed at the end of Atlantic crossings. The old liner would be too tall to fit under modern bridges built since its retirement!

The first two Olympic Class ships were build on adjoining lots at the Harland & Wolff yard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Originally designed with a three funnel layout, a fourth largely non-functional funnel was added to the blueprints in order to suggest extra power - White Star’s big liners couldn’t match Lusitania and Mauretania’s exceptional rapidity, but they could offer the illusion of parity. The ‘extra’ funnels were used to vent the kitchens and heating systems - the interior spaces also housed dog kennels. Inside each dummy funnel a ladder ran up to its opening. During Titanic’s only visit to Queenstown (now Cobh), a stoker alarmed some passengers by climbing the internal ladder and peeping over the edge of the rim. The sight of a man with a sooty, coal-blackened face apparently standing inside a functioning funnel led superstitious people to consider it an ill-omen.

On December 16, 1908, the keel of Olympic, the first liner, was laid. Three months later, the keel for the second ship, Titanic, was laid next to it. The two ships constructed to identical specification to begin with. After Olympic’s maiden voyage, Ismay sought alterations to the unfinished Titanic based upon his own observations as to how the available spaces might be used to better effect. The exterior appearances of the two liners were thus slightly different - A deck (just under the boat deck) was open/unglazed for its entire length on the Olympic, Titanic’s A deck was glazed for the first half of its length - Ismay had heard passengers on the Olympic's maiden voyage complaining about cold winds, so this problem was remedied on her sister. Also, the windows of B deck were irregularly spaced on Olympic and regularly spaced on Titanic.