Adriatic (ship, 1907)
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The RMS Adriatic (II) was a transatlantic liner of the British shipping company White Star Line that was put into service in 1907 . It was the last to be completed and the largest in a quartet of sister ships that came to be known as "The Big Four". The Adriatic was decommissioned in 1934 and broken up in Japan the following year .
background
Thomas Ismay , the founder and long-time director of the White Star Line, wanted to build a sister ship for the RMS Oceanic , which was commissioned in 1899 , which was to be named Olympic . After Ismay's sudden death on November 23, 1899, however, these plans were discarded and White Star, now run by his son Bruce Ismay , instead ordered four new ships from Harland & Wolff, in which luxury and comfort were more in the foreground than how for most competitors, the speed.
These four ships were the Celtic (1901), the Cedric (1902), the Baltic (1903) and most recently the Adriatic (1907). In terms of size, speed and equipment, the four liners were only surpassed by the Mauretania and the Lusitania of the Cunard Line .
The ship
The Adriatic was built at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast , Northern Ireland , and was launched on September 20, 1906. She was the second ship of the shipping company to receive this name. The 222.7 meter long and 22.8 meter wide Adriatic was the last to be completed of the quartet of sister ships over 20,000 GRT that the White Star Line put into service in the first years of the 20th century and which is known as "The Big Four" were.
At 24,541 GRT, the Adriatic was the Big Four's largest ship, but the only one of them that was not the largest ship in the world when it was commissioned . However, she was the largest ship in the White Star fleet to date. With 17,000 wave horsepower, it was also faster than its three predecessors and was also the world's first ocean liner on which a swimming pool and a Turkish bath were available to passengers. Because of the high passenger and cargo capacity, the Adriatic, like its sister ships, was a very profitable ship and very popular with customers, despite the relatively low speed.
The vessel was washed with two quadruple expansion - steam engine driven, which allowed a cruising speed of 17 knots. It had two propellers, two chimneys and four masts . The ship could take a total of 2825 passengers, of which 425 in the first, 500 in the second and 1900 in the third class.
On May 8, 1907, the Adriatic ran under the command of Captain Edward John Smith in Liverpool on her maiden voyage to New York . Edward Smith commanded the Adriatic until February 1911. Then he switched to the new RMS Olympic and in 1912 was captain on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic , in the sinking of which he was killed.
After the maiden voyage, she was put on the Southampton – New York route, to which she first sailed on June 5, 1907. She was the first White Star ship to offer a weekly service from Southampton to New York and the first to use the newly built White Star Dock in Southampton (renamed Ocean Dock in 1922). It was followed by the Teutonic , the Majestic and the Oceanic .
The Adriatic stayed on the Southampton – New York route until it was replaced by the Olympic in June 1911 . She then ran back to Liverpool for her Atlantic crossings. In 1912 Millvina Dean , the last to die survivor of the sinking of the Titanic , returned to Britain as an infant with her family on board the Adriatic .
During and after the First World War
During the First World War , the ship remained in passenger traffic, but was also used as a troop transport. She survived the war without incident and then returned fully to the service of the White Star Line. In 1928 the class system was abolished on the Adriatic , which was now a single class ship. From 1933 she was no longer used as a transatlantic steamer, but as a cruise ship.
After the merger of White Star and Cunard in 1934, the Adriatic became part of Cunard-White Star Ltd. On December 19, 1934, she left Liverpool for the last time and after completion of this journey was sold to Japan for demolition and broken up in Onomichi in March 1935 . She was the last ship of the Big Four to be decommissioned.