That is pretty cool

Amazing pics.

The supreme irony is that she’s in a far better state than almost any other White Star ship, bar Titanic’s own tender, Nomadic, which is finally undergoing restoration in Belfast, and is the last surviving White Star vessel.

The operable word when it came to the Olympics, was “never”.

Olympic, the first one built, and smallest of the three (when built) lent her name to the “Olympic Class”, and served before and after Titanic, throughout the Great War, even surviving the Great Depression, until she was ultimately done in, after White Star merged with Cunard, the resultant larger conglomerate retired its excess tonnage, and had the collective financial wherewithal to bankroll the building of the Queen Mary.

Ever before she was towed to Scotland to die (despite being quite capable of steaming there, having been refitted extensively just two years prior), Olympic was a relic; society had moved on, and Second and Third classes were now referred to as “Tourist”, a situation which would have horrified many of White Star’s First Class clientele in 1912. Even though she burned oil at four hundred tons a day, rather than coal at a rate of nine hundred tons; following a refit after WWI, she was, by the Thirties, an inefficient and poorly patronised vessel. And pleasure cruises had yet to come into fashion.

Unlike many vessels of her era, she never ran on diesel, because of her earlier refit in 1919/20, when she dispensed with the services of a couple of hundred stokers and the like, by not firing on coal any more.

Titanic, of course, was the second and at the time the largest ocean liner in the world, when she left Cobh for New York. Along with stealing that title from Olympic, she also stole her captain, one E.J. Smith, who was prevailed upon to shake down the ship on her maiden passenger voyage before he hung up his cap.

Like her captain, Titanic never made it.

The biggest of the three was Brittanic (she had been originally planned as Gigantic, but the name was thought too similiar-understandably so, to her older, unfortunate, sister). She was launched as Archduke Ferdinand was taking a bullet, and so entered the war relatively quickly, without even a christening! Unlike the others, she was totally white, with a green stripe and red crosses. Brittanic was to be a hospital ship, and her fate was sealed when Lusitania (a Cunard vessel), was sunk by one of two torpedos (the last on board) fired by a U-boat returning to Germany, as her services were then required as a matter of urgency.

While Titanic almost made one voyage, Brittanic almost made six. Just eleven months after her launch, she was sunk off the coast of Greece, by a mine. She lies within diving distance, in 400ft of water.

For her part, she never carried a ticket holding passenger-spending all ten months and twenty eight days of her life in wartime service.

Looks like the Titanic is on the Moon if you ask me!

amazing images

Has the stern eroded away? How long until the wreck is gone forever?

I’m at home in perfect comfort and I’m just staring at these images trying to comprehend the stomach churning terror felt by those unlucky few stuck inside this ship as it started to descend into the icy blackness of the north Atlantic… the opulence and comfort around them contrasting horrifically with shuddering and jerking of the structure as they sank to bottom in full knowledge that there was zero hope for them. Jesus, the poor beggars.

thanks for that! great information Ryan :)

Amazing images and some great posts. Thank you!

Where’s Leo?

It’s like Titanic is back from the dead!

It sailed. It sank. Get over it.

Always intruiged by all things Titanic but those pics are just plain crap. I’d imagine it cost massive $ and man hours to compile that sh1t. Just leave it alone down there and maintain the mystery I say…