Titanic, Olympic, and Britannic

Posted by John Crandall Apr 3, 2007

Two sank quickly, and the third had a repeated bad luck as well. The Olympic was the first launched in June 1911. She had a collision with a Royal Navy Ship, and limped in to port to be repaired using components of her sister ship the Titanic which was then under construction. As everyone probably already knows, the Titanic struck and iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage with a high death toll due to a lack of lifeboats. The Olympic was then refitted to carry more lifeboats.

The third ship, the Britannic was originally to be named the Gigantic, but due to bad luck which many thought stemmed from arrogance the name was changed to Britannic which was deemed to be a luckier name. She was fitted with the largest steam turbine in the world at 18,000 horsepower. Launched in 1914 she was Commissioned as a hospital ship in 1915 for WWI. She was sunk almost immediately by a mine or torpedo off the Greek Island of Kea. Attempts to beach her on the island failed, and she sank in a fashion similar to the Titanic. Two lifeboats launched without orders from the port side were sucked into the propellers. There were no survivors from these two boats.

The Olympic survived the war, and even sunk a German U-boat by ramming. She then returned to commercial service, and operated until 1934 with only one further mishap involving a Nantucket lightship where seven lives were lost in a collision. She even earned the affectionate nickname “old reliable”, but was scrapped in 1935. Of the three “unsinkables”, only the Olympic did not quickly find her way to the bottom of the sea.