Titanic’s Forgotten Sister Ships

The sinking of the Titanic was one of the world’s most dramatic events of the 20th century, but the stories of two other giant sister ships produced at the same time and at the same shipyard in Northern Ireland. have long been forgotten.

RMS Olympic was a British ocean liner and the lead ship of the White Star Line’s trio of Olympic-class liners. Olympic had a career spanning 24 years from 1911 to 1935, in contrast to her short-lived sister ships, Titanic and Britannic.

This included service as a troopship during the First World War, which gained her the nickname “Old Reliable”, and during which she rammed and sank the U-boat U-103. She returned to civilian service after the war, and served successfully as an ocean liner throughout the 1920s and into the first half of the 1930s, although increased competition, and the slump in trade during the Great Depression after 1930, made her operation increasingly unprofitable. Olympic was withdrawn from service and sold for scrap on 12 April 1935, which was completed in 1937.

HMHS Britannic (originally to be the RMS Britannic) was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line’s Olympic class of steamships and the second White Star ship to bear the name Britannic. She was the youngest sister of the RMS Olympic and the RMS Titanic and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner. She was operated as a hospital ship near the Dardenelles from 1915 until her sinking near the Greek island of Kea, in the Aegean Sea, in November 1916. At the time she was the largest hospital ship in the world.

Britannic was launched just before the start of the First World War. She was designed to be the safest of the three ships with design changes made during construction due to lessons learned from the sinking of the Titanic. She was laid up at her builders, Harland and Wolff, in Belfast for many months before being requisitioned as a hospital ship. In 1915 and 1916 she served between the United Kingdom and the Dardanelles.

On the morning of 21 November 1916 she hit a naval mine of the Imperial German Navy near the Greek island of Kea and sank 55 minutes later, killing 30 of 1,066 people on board; the 1,036 survivors were rescued from the water and lifeboats. Britannic was the largest ship lost in the First World War.After the War, the White Star Line was compensated for the loss of Britannic by the award of SS Bismarck as part of postwar reparations; she entered service as RMS Majestic. The wreck of the Britannic was located and explored by Jacques Cousteauin 1975. The vessel is the largest intact passenger ship on the seabed in the world.

It was bought in 1996 and is currently owned by Simon Mills, a maritime historian.

Destination: Ireland / Northern Ireland / England / Scotland / Greece / Turkey