The Olympic or "Old Reliable" as she became known, was launched on October 20th 1910
and served for about 25 years and was eventually scrapped. Because she was the first of
the three sisters, they were all designated "Olympic Class" ships. I believe that much
more fuss was made of the Olympic than of the Titanic right up until the Titanic sunk. She
was the only one of the three sisters envisioned at Lord Pirrie's Dinner party in 1907 that
fulfilled her dream. 

There were two external ways to tell her apart from her younger sister. Toward the front of
B deck, the Olympic has evenly spaced windows, and the promenade deck was fully open
for its entire length. The Titanic on the other hand was fitted with a windowed cover over
one third of the length of the promenade deck, and the windows on deck B had irregular
spacing. There is a photograph or two showing both of the sisters together when the
Olympic came in for repairs. At this stage the promenade cover had not yet been fitted to
Titanic and because of the angle of the other and the invisibility of the name, some people
mistake it for the Olympic. The irregular window spacing on B deck though, definitely show
which is which. Close up ways to tell the difference was by the keel number 400 stamped on
major components, her sister Titanic's keel number was 401. The keel number of the final
sister Britannic was 433. 

In contrast with the very short lives of her sisters the Olympic's career spanned almost
half a century. Following the disaster of her sister, she spent six months at Harland &
Wolff undergoing an extensive refit that extended the double bottom up the sides , giving
her a double skin and also to fit extra life boats. She was ready by the spring of 1913 and
was back in service on the North Atlantic passenger route. Her tonnage had increased to
46,359 tons. 

The first few voyages of Olympic were uneventful but disaster struck on the outward
bound leg of the fifth. On the morning of September 20th 1911, the Olympic departed
Southampton with Captain E.J. Smith (who was in command of Titanic when she sunk).
Shortly after noon she was rounding the Bramble Bank at the normal harbour speed of 19
knots when she encountered the 7350 ton British Cruiser Hawke. Both ships turned so as
to proceed down the Spithead channel and in fact, did so on parallel courses for quite a
distance. Reports stated they were about 200 - 300 yards apart when suddenly the Hawke
seemed to veer toward the larger ship and collision was unavoidable, and she slammed into
the starboard rear of the Olympic about 85 feet from the stern. The bow of the Hawke was
very badly damaged, and two gashes were left in the side of the Olympic, one above the
water line and one below. The starboard propeller was badly damaged and required
replacing. I have photographs of this damage. Luckily there was no loss of life on either
ship, and both made it back to port under their own power. In many following court cases
and appeals, the Olympic was held totally responsible for the accident. There were other
mishaps and problems with the Olympic, I am currently researching these, and will
document them here at a later stage, so stay tuned. 

Even after the outbreak of World War One, she remain in commercial service and even
rescued the crew of a British battleship Audacious that had struck a mine off the coast of
Ireland. In 1915 she was commissioned as a naval transport and spent the rest of the war
ferrying soldiers to the front. She was painted in very dazzling colours, with very bright
geometric shapes on a yellow background, to confuse enemy submarines. She survived
four submarine attacks, and in March 1916 she was returned temporarily to the White Star
Line. During this time she was fitted with six inch guns for submarine defence. 

It was in May 1918 during her 22nd troop carrying voyage the Olympic met her greatest
challenge and adventure of the war. She was attacked by German submarine U-103. The
torpedo was avoided by quick evasive action, but then Olympic did an incredibly brave
thing. She turned on her attacker and rammed it! The blow to the submarine was only a
glancing blow, but any blow from a 46,000 ton ship would have been massive. The
submarine quickly began to sink and some of her crew managed to escape and were picked
up by a passing American destroyer. 

After the war she had an impressive record of service. She had transported 41,000 civilian
passengers, 66,000 troops (American and Canadian), 12,000 members of a Chinese labor
battalion. She had steamed 184,000 miles and burned 347,000 tons of coal. This is why she
became known as "Old Reliable". 

After a post war refit costing $2,430,000, she was back in the sea lanes by 1920 and over
the next fifteen years made hundreds of crossings. She had one major accident, on May
15th 1934 during heavy fog she rammed the Nantucket lightship and seven of the eleven
crew members were lost. That same year the White Star merged with Cunard and in
March 1935 after losing business to newer ships she made her final voyage to New York
before being sold, stripped and eventually scrapped. 

The Olympic would have to be one of my favourites. At the time she was built, she was the
largest liner afloat. She lost this title for a short while to her sister ship the Titanic but of
course regained it again until the German ship Imperator (later to become the Cunard ship
BerenGaria) was built. As her third sister Britannic never served as a commercial liner,
this meant that Olympic was the largest British liner until the Queen Mary. Some readers
have disputed this and claimed that Aquitania was the largest. This is not correct,
Aquitania was longer and carried more passengers and crew (3725 and 1200 respectively)
than Britannic (2574 and 997 respectively) and for this reason some believed her to be
therefore larger but the gross tonnage of Aquitania was less. Remember that tonnage is
based on enclosed space not weight per se, as the term implies.