Olympic Class Ships

Olympic, Titanic, Britannic

In a London dining room in 1907, the chairmen of the White Star Line and the Belfast shipbuilder Harland & Wolff gathered round a table to discuss the construction of the three largest ships in the world. They were to be the White Star's answer to the Cunard flyers Lusitania and Mauretania and were designed to take the cream of the transatlantic traffic. Built at extraordinary cost - ?1,500,000 per ship - the three were designed not to be the fastest but to be the most luxurious of floating palaces. Only the first ship of the class ever reached New York. Titanic sank on her maiden voyage and Britannic was converted into a hospital ship and sank without taking a fare-paying passenger. Olympic, however, served as the White Star flagship from 1911 until 1935 when she was ignominiously scrapped. This is the story of the three finest ships built in Belfast.