Olympic class
Olympic and Titanic in Belfast, March 6, 1912
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The Olympic class was a series of three ships of the White Star Line : RMS Olympic , RMS Titanic and HMHS Britannic (possibly under the name Gigantic designed). Traditionally, the class was named after its first ship, the Olympic . The ship names originally envisaged come from Greek mythology . The decision to use the name Britannic instead of the apparently proposed name Gigantic was made, contrary to numerous speculations, from the start and was therefore a done deal even before the sinking of the Titanic . The accident is also decisive for the fact that the Olympic class is still well known among the public.
History of origin
After the completion of the two extremely successful sister ships RMS Lusitania and RMS Mauretania for the Cunard Line in 1907, the White Star Line was forced to strive to build even larger and more advanced ships in order to remain competitive. Under the direction of William James Pirrie , chairman of the White Star house yard Harland & Wolff in Belfast , and the President of the White Star Line, Joseph Bruce Ismay , shipbuilders Alexander Carlisle and Thomas Andrews developed concrete plans for the construction of one from 1907 onwards ship class consisting of three huge steamers, which should surpass everything that has been seen before due to their size and the generosity of their equipment. In contrast to the two Cunard liners, however, high cruising speed should not play an essential role in the design of the new steamers.
The first draft was for a ship with only three chimneys, which was then changed to four chimneys for aesthetic reasons on the instructions of Pirrie. By using the fourth chimney as a ventilator, the number of scoops on deck, which was a nuisance on the Cunard ships, could be avoided. The three ships of the class were thus the only steamships ever built with four chimneys, one of which was only a dummy: the exhaust air from the ships' kitchen and engine rooms was channeled through it. The aft mast of the ships was also added later in the design - here, too, the main focus was on the symmetry of the outer shape, which should be preserved for optical reasons.
Some details of the interior were also changed in the course of the design phase, for example the plan to build a huge, domed dining room in the first class was painted and instead a particularly spacious open staircase with a glass dome was provided. Basically, the interior design of the public spaces of the ship class was based relatively closely on elements already used on other White Star ships (e.g. the shape and decoration of wall panels, ceiling and floor design, lighting fixtures, etc.), but was overall in quantity and Quality is often more generous.
Technical details
The three ships should be able to reach cruising speeds of 21 knots and cross the Atlantic on the Southampton - New York City route in seven days (the competing Cunard ships made the distance in five to six days). A key aspect of the design was high efficiency in terms of coal consumption, which is why a new type of propulsion system was developed for the three sister ships: two conventional piston steam engines with a maximum of approx. 15,000 hp each (four-cylinder, triple expansion engine ) drove the two external propellers, while a third, amidships installed, smaller propeller was operated by a Parsons turbine with a maximum of approx. 16,000 hp. This turbine was powered by the exhaust steam from the two steam engines. This unusual combination of the two types of propulsion resulted in an overall lower speed, but due to the economical energy conversion and the weak vibrations of the system it meant an immense advantage for the finances of the shipping company and the comfort of the ships. Despite the relatively low demands on the speed of the ships, the drive proved to be extremely powerful and clearly exceeded expectations: the Olympic reached the highest known speed of a ship of this class in August 1914, when she was surprised by the outbreak of war while crossing east tried with the utmost strength to escape the danger posed by German auxiliary cruisers . She reached a maximum speed of 25.1 knots.
The predicate “unsinkable” in relation to the Olympic class , particularly associated with the Titanic, comes from a special edition of the British specialist magazine The Shipbuilder , which appeared on the occasion of the Olympic's maiden voyage in 1911. In it, great attention was paid to the safety system of the ship class and the descent safety was described as practically unsinkable ("practically unsinkable"). In fact, Olympic and Titanic, with a total of 16 compartments that could be sealed watertight by bulkhead doors, achieved a high level of security for the time: Basically, a two-compartment standard was met, which meant that any two adjacent ones could be flooded at the same time Departments could never endanger the ship. Structurally, flooding of three or four departments (especially in the direction of the bow and stern) was still manageable. Because the bulkhead doors were considered to be particularly reliable due to a new type of construction (automatic closing in the event of water ingress by a float contact), since human error when closing the bulkheads could be ruled out, it was assumed that a particularly high level of additional security in the event of accidents. After the sinking of the Titanic , these safety measures were once again significantly improved on the other two ships (increasing the watertight partition walls of the compartments, adding a double outer skin).
Olympic and Titanic carried a total of 16 lifeboats and four additional folding boats with them when they were completed. These offered a total of 1,178 people, which meant that the regulations for ships over 10,000 GRT at the time, which required 962 berths, were far exceeded. Since the sinking safety of large ships had increased significantly around the turn of the century and radio technology made it possible to call for help quickly in an emergency, it was assumed that the boats were not intended to take all people on board at the same time, but only to transfer people to a rescue ship would be needed.
A previously unknown level of luxury was sought for the interior of the first class. In particular, the private accommodation of the passengers should offer a level of comfort that, despite the higher speed of the competition, should convince travelers to go on the White Star ships. The use of precious wood paneling, lavish furnishings with marble, crystal and gold and, above all, an unusually diverse range of public spaces (including, for the first time on board a ship, a swimming pool, Turkish bath , various cafes and salons) set new standards. The quality of the accommodations in the second and third class also exceeded that of comparable facilities on older and smaller ships.
The dimensions of the ships were unprecedented at the time: with a length of 269 m, a width of 28.2 m and a volume of over 45,000 GRT , both the Olympic and the Titanic were the largest ever man-made at the time of their completion moving objects. When fully occupied, the ships each offered around 3500 people (including crew). Despite essentially the same dimensions, each ship was slightly larger than its predecessor when it was completed: the Titanic exceeded the Olympic by around 1000 GRT, and the Britannic in turn exceeded the Titanic by around 2000 GRT. The increase in size between Olympic and Titanic is primarily due to the enlargement of the suites on the B-deck, which were pulled up to the ship's side on the latter, so that the glazed promenade deck there on the Olympic was built over. Contrary to popular belief, the glazing of the front half of the A-deck promenade deck on the Titanic (the main distinguishing feature of the two ships) did not play a role here, as it was not a converted interior and was therefore not used for the size calculation of the ship Mattered. The Britannic was 46 cm wider than her sister ships, which - apart from the roofing of the aft corrugated deck, the redesign of the aft poop deck and some additional space on the boat deck - resulted in a fundamentally larger interior volume and thus a considerable increase in GRT.
In addition to transporting passengers and cargo, the three ships were also intended for the delivery of mail between Great Britain and the United States and therefore carried the prefix “RMS” for Royal Mail Ship .
Mission history
RMS Olympic
Launched in 1910, completed in 1911.
After its first successful crossings, the ship was completely overhauled after the sinking of the Titanic and equipped with additional lifeboats and extended safety equipment. In the First World War used as a troop carrier that was Olympic reinstated on the Atlantic route in 1920 and remained until its decommissioning in 1935 one of the most popular and most popular vessels on regular service. It was scrapped in Jarrow from 1935.
RMS Titanic
Launched in 1911, completed in 1912.
Already on its maiden voyage, the ship collided with an iceberg on the night of April 14th to 15th, 1912 and sank about 300 nautical miles southeast of Newfoundland about two hours and forty minutes after the collision . With no other ship close enough to rescue passengers from the sinking Titanic , only the 705 occupants of the lifeboats survived the sinking, while over 1,500 passengers and crew - including the captain and many top British and American society - were killed. The disaster is one of the most serious shipping accidents in history and led to far-reaching improvements in the safety regulations for ocean-going ships, which are still valid today.
HMHS Britannic
Launched in 1914, completed in 1915.
After the Titanic disaster, the construction of the Britannic was interrupted in order to improve the safety concept. The measures decided on - such as increasing the watertight bulkheads to the B-deck, a double hull hull and the installation of huge lifeboat cranes - should make the Britannic the safest ship in its class. After the outbreak of the First World War, she was used as a hospital ship and was considered the best equipped hospital ship at sea. After five successful voyages, she ran into a sea mine on November 21, 1916 in the Kea Canal when approaching the port of Mudros in the Aegean Sea . The Britannic sank within an hour, whereby 30 of the 1,036 people on board were killed.
Others
- The Britannic was the only ship of the class at the time of her completion, not the largest ship in the world. The German express steamer Vaterland held this record back then .
- The Olympic succeeded in sinking a German submarine by ramming it during the First World War.
- Both Olympic and Titanic were considered "practically unsinkable" at the time of their completion. The two competitors Mauretania and Lusitania were also advertised with this rating. It is a legend that - as is often wrongly assumed today - the Titanic alone was designated with this property.
- The piston steam engines manufactured for the three sister ships were the largest ever built in terms of dimensions.
- The Britannic's machinery was more efficient than that of its two sister ships due to a slightly larger boiler heating surface and a more powerful steam turbine. For them, the planning therefore assumed a cruising speed of 22 knots ( Olympic and Titanic : 21 knots).
- The Titanic was up to the fall of the Costa Concordia , which ever went down the largest passenger ship in peacetime. If you include war losses, the Britannic is the third largest sunken passenger ship after the Italian Rex and the Costa Concordia.
- At first glance, the dimensions of the ships of the Olympic class seem considerable compared to modern ships: The Allure of the Seas , the world's largest cruise ship since 2009, is only around 90 meters longer and its total height is around 74 meters almost identical to the total height of the Olympic class (keel to top of mast) of 72 meters. However, the Allure of the Seas is more than twice as wide, and the 16 passenger decks reach a few meters below the top of the mast. It weighs more than four times and can therefore carry more than two and a half times as much passengers and crew.
- The crew member Violet Jessop sailed on all three ships and survived the collision of the Olympic with the HMS Hawke , the sinking of the Titanic and the sinking of the Britannic.
literature
- Mark Chirnside: The Olympic-Class Ships: Olympic, Titanic, Britannic. Tempus Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0-7524-2868-3 .
- Robert D. Ballard , Ken Marschall : Lost Liners - From the Titanic to Andrea Doria - the glory and decline of the great luxury liners . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH & Co., Munich 1997, ISBN 3-453-12905-9 (English: Lost Liners: From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria. The ocean floor reveals its greatest lost ships. Translated by Helmut Gerstberger).
Web links
- Information on the Olympic class (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Joshua Milford: What happened to Gigantic? Retrieved March 5, 2016 .
- ↑ Mark Chirnside: Olympic - Titanic's sister. NPI Media Group, 2004, p. 122.
- ↑ The White Star ship RMS Adriatic already had a pool called a "pool", but its dimensions were unsuitable for swimming and only served to cool off after using the Turkish bath.
- ↑ [1] Fräulein Unsinkbar - Spiegel Online, accessed on May 5, 2017