RMS Oceanic (ship, 1899)
 The Oceanic in New York (1907)
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
The RMS Oceanic (II) was a transatlantic liner of the British shipping company White Star Line , which was in service from 1899 until its sinking in 1914. The Oceanic was the largest ship in the world from 1899 to 1901 and the flagship and figurehead of the shipping company at the turn of the century .
Technical
With 17,272 GRT, the Oceanic replaced the Kaiser Wilhelm der Große (14,349 GRT) of North German Lloyd, which was commissioned in September 1897, as the largest ship in the world. She retained this title until July 1901, when the White Star Line put the 21,035 GRT Celtic into service. With a length of 214.5 meters, she was also the first ship to exceed Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Eastern , which was commissioned in 1858 . She quickly became known as the "Queen of the Ocean" (German: "Queen of the Ocean"). The New York Times also referred to the Oceanic as the "millionaire ship" because it was very popular with the American upper class and often had wealthy celebrities such as John Pierpont Morgan , William Collins Whitney , Philip Danforth Armor and Cornelius Vanderbilt III on board.
According to Thomas Ismay's credo, “only the very best” was used in the Oceanic . Their bridge was integrated into the superstructure, which gave her a straight, yacht-like appearance. The design of the Oceanic was later applied to the so-called "big four" of the White Star Line, a quartet of sister ships over 20,000 GRT, the Celtic (1901), Cedric (1902), Baltic (1903) and Adriatic (1907). She was the first of two planned sister ships. However, the second ship, to be named Olympic , was never built.
The steamer was 214.5 meters long, 19.4 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 13.6 meters. It was powered by triple expansion steam engines that developed 28,000 horsepower and allowed an average cruising speed of 19 knots and a top speed of 21 knots. The Oceanic had two propellers , two funnels and three masts . There was space on board for 410 first class passengers , 300 second class passengers and 1000 third class passengers (a total of 1710 people). In peacetime, the ship was operated by a crew of 349.
Early years
The keel of the Oceanic with hull number 317 was laid in January 1897. The ship was to become the new flagship of the White Star Line and was built under the personal guidance of Thomas Ismay , the founder of the White Star Line. As usual for White Star, the Oceanic was built at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland . She was the second ship of the shipping company to receive this name.
The cost of building the ship was one million pounds sterling (in monetary terms at the time). 1500 workers were busy with the construction. The launch of the Oceanic on January 14, 1899 took place in front of over 1,000 invited guests, including nobles and dignitaries such as Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava , James Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Abercorn and Charles Vane-Tempest -Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry . The Oceanic was built for the Liverpool - Southampton - New York route, on which it remained in service with the White Star Line throughout the years. On September 6, 1899, under the command of Captain John G. Cameron, she sailed with 1890 people on board on her maiden voyage via Southampton to New York, where she arrived on September 13. Cameron remained captain of the Oceanic until he was promoted to head of the White Star Line in Southampton in April 1907 .
On October 9, 1900, she ran aground on the Irish coast at Three Castles Head, but made it back into open water on her own. Five days later, the anchor chain broke in Liverpool , killing one person and injuring another. On August 8, 1901 at around 1.30 a.m., a collision occurred in the Irish North Channel between the Oceanic and the small steamer Kincora of the Waterford Steamship Company in the dark and fog, as a result of which the Kincora , which was hit amidships, sank and seven of its 21 crew members were killed . The Kincora lifeboats were destroyed in the collision and could not be used. The Oceanic launched its lifeboats and stayed there until daybreak, but was only able to save 14 men from the Kincora . Among the passengers on the Oceanic on this voyage were the actors Ethel Barrymore and Richard Carle , Rita Lydig Stokes , wife of the US multimillionaire William Earl Dodge Stokes , the "Baking Soda King" known financier William Ziegler and the conservative British politician Lewis Payn Dawnay with wife Victoria.
In October 1905, the Oceanic was the first ship of the White Star Line on which a mutiny took place. More than 30 stokers were arrested for complaining about working conditions and wages. On November 25, 1906, four days after leaving Liverpool at the height of an Atlantic storm , the Oceanic was hit by a monster wave that struck the glass front of the bridge and threw Captain Cameron against the compass . Cameron passed out. He was taken to his cabin and was resuscitated 15 minutes later by the ship's doctor, William O'Loughlin. O'Loughlin later became a ship's doctor on the RMS Olympic and the RMS Titanic , in the sinking of which he was killed.
On June 3, 1907, a fire broke out in Storage Room # 6 while the Oceanic was in New York Harbor. Since the crew was unable to bring the fire under control, Captain Herbert Haddock , who later commanded the Olympic , alerted the New York Fire Department , which was able to extinguish the fire with the help of a fire boat. On February 11, 1910, she inaugurated the Chelsea Piers in New York City. On March 21, 1911, the top of the foremast broke off and hit the deck after being struck by lightning in a severe storm . The first officer Charles Lightoller was injured. He was later the second officer on the Titanic , the sinking of which he survived.
On February 6, 1914, the steamer was hit again by a massive wave on a journey to New York, which washed the deck chairs of the promenade deck towards the bow and depressed several portholes . Nobody was seriously injured. On August 1, 1914, the ship left New York with passengers on board for the last time.
RMS Titanic
On May 13, 1912, the Oceanic encountered a drifting, unmanned lifeboat in the North Atlantic about 200 nautical miles from the place where the Titanic sank. It was the remains of the foldable lifeboat A ("Collapsible A"), which could no longer be launched before the sinking of the Titanic , but then swam freely and served as a temporary rescue for a number of people.
Three bodies were found in the boat, numbered 331, 332 and 333, including the Canadian businessman, landowner and first class passenger Thomson Beattie (# 331) and third class passenger Arthur Keefe (# 332). Body # 333, believed to be a crew member, was never identified. All three received a burial at sea . Letters addressed to the tennis player Richard Williams and a ring engraved with "Edward and Gerda" were also found in the boat .
First World War
Shortly after the outbreak of World War I , the Oceanic was one of the first ships to be subordinated to the British Admiralty and on August 8, 1914, was assigned to the Royal Navy as an armed auxiliary cruiser . The British government's agreement with White Star stipulated that they would share in the expenses of maintaining the ship during the war. The ship was equipped with cannons and the funnels and deck superstructures were painted black.
On August 25, 1914, she ran out as HMS Oceanic in Southampton to patrol the waters between the Scottish mainland and the Faroe Islands , especially in the area of the Shetland Islands . The ship's command was authorized to check the cargo and crew of any ship in order to prevent any logistical support from Germany . For this purpose she had Royal Marines on board. The ship was under the direction of the merchant captain Henry Smith and the commanding officer William Feth Slayter.
The HMS Oceanic steamed to Scapa Flow on the Orkney Islands, the main base of the Royal Navy in World War I , from where it had easy access to the North Sea and the Atlantic . From there she drove on a zigzag course to the Shetland Islands to avoid a possible submarine attack. This required very precise navigation , especially for such a large ship .
Downfall and Consequences
On the evening of September 7, 1914, the helmsman David Blair carried out a precise position determination. Blair was assigned to the Titanic's crew as the second mate in 1912 , but at the last moment the chief officer had been replaced by Henry T. Wilde and Blair had to leave the ship. However, the ship deviated from course 13 to 14 nautical miles during the voyage. While the ship's command believed that it was far southeast of the island of Foula , the Oceanic was on the other side of the island and approaching the notorious reef Shaalds of Foula. These rocks posed a direct threat to shipping, as they were only a few meters below the surface of the water and were barely noticeable, especially when the sea was calm.
After his night watch, Captain William Slayter went to bed with the order to go to Foula without knowing of the dangerous situation. Captain Henry Smith took the morning watch. Smith felt safer in open waters and ordered the helmsman Blair, contrary to the orders of his superior Slayter, to circumnavigate the island closely, to head for the open sea. Shortly afterwards, Slayter, who had apparently noticed the change in course, appeared again on the bridge and invalidated Smith's order. He ordered another course change, which made the Oceanic hit the cliffs of the Shaalds of Foula on the morning of September 8th . The ship ran aground in calm and clear weather. It was the first ship of the Allied forces to be lost in World War I.
The Glenogil , a fishing trawler from Aberdeen , was the first ship to arrive at the scene of the accident under the command of Captain Robert Armor. She tried unsuccessfully to pull the much larger Oceanic off the rocks. Gradually, other ships took part in the rescue operation, including the Lyons , a salvage ship of the Royal Navy. The crew of the Oceanic put in the lifeboats of the stranded ship to the Glenogil , which they distributed to the Alsatian and the Forward . The first officer, Charles Lightoller , was the last to disembark and took the card room clock as a souvenir. There were no fatalities to mourn. The Oceanic lay on the reef for three weeks until the inhabitants of the island of Foula discovered after a severe storm on September 29, 1914 that the ship had sunk. The accident was not widely publicized at the time, as it was felt to be embarrassing that such a well-known ship had crashed only a few days after entering the Royal Navy in completely calm weather.
David Blair was tried in Devonport in November 1914 and found guilty of causing the Oceanic to run aground. In his defense, he said that the statements of Captains Slayter and Smith exonerated him, since they had stated that he had acted on their instructions. The same allegation was made against Smith at a second hearing. He and Slayter were acquitted while Blair was reprimanded. In the mid-1920s, a salvage team tasked with demolishing sunk German warships in Scapa Flow removed most of the wreckage of the Oceanic . In 1973, the salvage of other parts began and by 1979 most of the remains of the wreck had been removed. Today there are only a few pieces of wreckage left at the sinking site.
Web links / sources
- Extensive description of the Oceanic on the White Star Line website
- Brief illustrated description of the ship
- Collection of contemporary newspaper articles on the sinking of the Oceanic ( Memento from January 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- Information about the Oceanic in the wreck database
- Report of the collision of the Oceanic with the Kincorla in the New York Times of August 9, 1901
- Report of the incident with the monster wave in the New York Times of November 29, 1906
- Report of the sinking of the Oceanic in the New York Times, September 10, 1914