Max – Old Steam Ships

RMS Mauretania: Queen of the Atlantic

Every ship has a soul, but the Mauretania had one you could talk to. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1935, President Roosevelt donated his own large-scale model of the RMS Mauretania to the Smithsonian Institution, where it remains part of the maritime collection. And now another one of Max’s love letters to these wonderful ships.

Her sister was Lusitania; the minute she sank, she became a legend. After her sister sank, Mauretania just kept working and working. There is a parallel to the RMS Olympic, which became a runner-up to her sister, Titanic. Both the Olympic and Mauretania were great ships and worked for decades, unlike their more famous sisters. The ship’s interior is incredible. There are many pictures of this one because she sailed into the 1930s after being launched in 1906. The Edwardian period had great tastes in decor.

The RMS Mauretania was the fastest passenger liner in her era, bar none. She and her sister, RMS Lusitania, would swap out as the fastest ships, but Mauretania would take the record, as we will see. She was built for the Cunard Line during a time when ocean liners were becoming symbols of national pride. Launched in 1906 and entering service in 1907, she was designed to compete with the great German liners that were dominating the Atlantic. Along with her sister ship, she represented the latest in shipbuilding technology. She was powered by steam turbines, an innovation at the time, and quickly proved herself to be one of the fastest ships in the world.

After Cunard came out with Lusitania and Mauretania, White Star Line came out with Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic. The Cunard Line and White Star were something like the Apple and Microsoft of North Atlantic travel. They were enormous rivals, and every new ship was measured against what the other company had built. Beautiful ships came out of this competition.

Not long after entering service, Mauretania captured the Blue Riband (unofficial accolade given to the passenger ocean liner that achieved the fastest average speed on a regular crossing of the North Atlantic) for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic. She held the record for more than twenty years! That is an achievement that has never been matched. Passengers were impressed not only by her speed but also by her comfort. Her interiors featured grand public rooms, elegant dining areas, and luxurious accommodations. For many travelers, sailing on Mauretania was just as much about the experience as it was about reaching New York. At the time, she was just as famous as her sister.

When World War I began, Mauretania’s career changed dramatically. Like many large liners, she was called into government service. She served as a troopship and later as a hospital ship. During the Gallipoli campaign and other military operations, she transported thousands of soldiers and wounded personnel. Mauretania survived the war and returned to civilian service.

After the war, Mauretania returned to carrying passengers across the Atlantic and remained popular with travelers. In 1927, she carried Leonard and Phil Chess, two Polish immigrant boys who later built Chess Records. Four years later, Charlie Chaplin sailed aboard her alongside Malcolm Campbell, who had just set a new land-speed record in his Blue Bird automobile. When Mauretania reached Southampton, Campbell learned that King George V had approved his knighthood.

In June 1922, the Marx Brothers crossed the Atlantic aboard the Mauretania on their way to their first British tour. Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo were aboard, years before Hollywood made them household names. They returned to New York aboard White Star’s Cedric the following month.

However, newer ships were beginning to appear. Vessels such as the German Bremen and Europa were faster and more modern. By the early 1930s, Mauretania was showing her age. Although still admired, she could no longer compete with the newer generation of liners entering service.

In 1935, after nearly three decades on the Atlantic, Mauretania was retired and sold for scrap. Many people were saddened by the news. Crowds gathered to see her one last time as she made her final voyage. Today, she is remembered as one of the greatest ocean liners ever built. She combined speed, reliability, and elegance in a way few ships ever have. For many maritime historians, the Mauretania represents the high point of the great Edwardian liners and a time when crossing the Atlantic by ship was an adventure in itself.

Among the small group aboard for Mauretania’s final voyage was an unnamed couple who reportedly had spent their honeymoon on her maiden voyage in 1907. Nearly 28 years later, they returned to say goodbye to the ship that had helped begin their married life.

Olympic was the reliable old friend.

Mauretania was the reliable old friend who raced you home.

A very sad picture. The two were fierce rivals for 24 years, Olympic and Mauretania, heading toward the scrapyard. Olympic is on the left and Mauretania on the right. I’ve come to hate this picture because they should be hotels/museums today, not scrapped and lost to history.

LST 325 – A Personal Look

I usually don’t post during the week, but this is a post based on my experience this past weekend. On Sunday, a WWII ship came to my small town of Ashland City, to our park by the Cumberland River. The 83-year-old ship is 328 feet long and 50 feet wide. Over 4,000 showed up on Saturday, and roughly only 6,000 people live in the town. I boarded the ship on the tank deck, and it was like a warehouse. Then I walked through and up the decks. It has 6 decks in all, and it would be easy to get lost.

I explored the ship and saw the post office, the galley, the bunks, the engine room, watertight doors, the bulkhead, and most of the things I write about. The veterans were so much fun to talk to onboard. Inside, I felt like I was touching history and living it. I have a lot of pictures of the visit at the bottom. It was an incredibly massive ship inside.

After looking out from the top deck, I imagined a ship listing. How high it was above the water, and how hard it would be to lower a lifeboat. I am planning to visit some riverboats in Nashville and maybe a steamboat in Granville, Tennessee. I want to learn more so when I tell these stories I get a better idea of what I’m writing.

I also thought about the RMS Olympic and other ocean liners. LST-325 is roughly 328 feet long. Olympic was about 882 feet. You’re talking about putting nearly 2.7 LST-325s end-to-end to equal Olympic’s length and almost two side by side to get her width. It’s mind-boggling how large these ships are.

A Short History of LST-325

The Landing Ship, Tank was not designed for beauty or speed. It was designed to carry war directly onto a beach. The ship’s broad bow opened into two doors, and a heavy ramp allowed tanks, trucks, troops, and supplies to drive straight onto shore. Officially, LST meant Landing Ship, Tank. Sailors sometimes joked that it meant Large Slow Target.

LST-325 was laid down at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on August 10, 1942. She was launched on October 27 and commissioned on February 1, 1943. Her flat bottom and shallow draft allowed her to approach beaches that ordinary cargo ships could not reach. Ballast tanks helped change her trim for an ocean crossing or a landing, while a stern anchor could help pull her away from the beach after unloading.

During World War II, LST-325 served in the European theater. She participated in the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and the landings at Salerno that September. In June 1944, she took part in the Normandy invasion at Omaha Beach. During the months that followed, she made more than forty trips across the English Channel. She carried soldiers, vehicles, equipment, and supplies into France, then returned with wounded men and prisoners. She earned two battle stars for her wartime service.

After the war, she was decommissioned in 1946. She returned to service during the 1950s as USNS LST-325, supporting the construction of early-warning radar stations in the Arctic. In 1964, she was transferred to the Greek Navy and renamed Syros. She continued serving Greece for more than three decades.

In 2000, the USS LST Ship Memorial acquired the aging vessel. A volunteer crew, many of them veterans, brought her approximately 6,500 miles from Crete to Mobile, Alabama. After an extensive restoration, she opened to the public in 2001. Evansville, Indiana, became her permanent home in 2005.

Today, LST-325 remains operational and still travels under her own power. She is the only operational LST preserved in its World War II configuration afloat in American waters. The ship was originally built to bring soldiers and machines onto distant shores. More than eighty years later, she travels to American river towns and brings that history directly to us. If she comes to your town, take a tour!

John C. Niedermair’s original pencil sketch for the LST design. Courtesy of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME).

Sultana: A Fire that Changed Laws

This fire and sinking changed the rules and laws involving steam river paddleboats. In reality, this should have happened with the Pennsylvania steamboat.

The Sultana was a wooden, side‑wheel steamboat that became the setting for one of the deadliest maritime disasters in U.S. history. It was a catastrophe that killed 1,169 but was largely overshadowed by the end of the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. She was built in Cincinnati in 1863 and designed to carry a few hundred passengers and freight on the Mississippi. In April 1865, she was packed with more than five times her legal capacity, mostly Union soldiers who had survived brutal Confederate prison camps such as Andersonville and Cahaba.

In late April 1865, the Sultana arrived in Vicksburg with a leaking boiler. A boilermaker recommended a more extensive repair, but a smaller patch was installed so the vessel would not lose a profitable government contract. The government paid steamboat operators according to the number of former prisoners they transported. Quartermaster Reuben Hatch had promised Captain Mason at least 1,000 men in exchange for part of the payment.

The situation then grew out of control. Poor recordkeeping, haste, and corruption led Army officials to load 1,960 paroled Union prisoners aboard the Sultana. Once the guards, crew, and civilian passengers were included, approximately 2,137 people were aboard a vessel licensed to carry only 376 passengers. The boat was so crowded that men slept on the decks, inside the cabins, and on top of the cargo, and on top of the ship.

In the early hours of 27 April 1865, about seven miles north of Memphis, three of the Sultana’s four boilers exploded with tremendous force. The blast tore through the center of the wooden hull, killing many instantly and hurling bodies and debris into the air and into the Mississippi. The shattered boat caught fire and began to sink in the cold, fast‑moving river. Survivors scrambled for anything that floated: planks, doors, pieces of wreckage, and many jumped into the water to escape the flames. With only one small lifeboat and very few life preservers, and with men already exhausted and malnourished from prison, the odds of survival were slim.

Captain James Cass Mason has often been blamed for the decisions that led to the disaster, particularly allowing a temporary boiler repair and accepting an overloaded ship. Yet several survivors also recalled seeing him after the explosion, tearing pieces of the wreckage loose and throwing them into the river so desperate men would have something to hold onto. He was last seen helping others and never escaped himself. Like much of the Sultana story, his legacy remains complicated.

Estimates vary, but modern research suggests roughly 1,160–1,170 people died, with some older accounts placing the total nearer 1,800. Most of the victims were Union soldiers from Midwestern states, many of whom had survived Confederate prisons only to die on the way home. Hundreds more were badly burned or injured; many of those who initially survived later died from their wounds or from exposure in the river.

An official inquiry blamed the disaster on boiler mismanagement, low water levels, and the faulty repair made at Vicksburg. That was compounded by severe overcrowding that made the vessel top‑heavy and unstable. No one was ever held criminally accountable; Captain Mason died in the disaster, and the government’s attention was consumed by the war’s end and Lincoln’s assassination. After that, the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth took precedence, so the Sultana tragedy received relatively little lasting attention. Today, the wreck is believed to lie buried under a soybean field in near Marion in eastern Arkansas. A small museum in Marion, Arkansas, preserves the story of what remains America’s worst maritime disaster

The Sultana disaster exposed serious weaknesses in the nation’s steamboat safety laws. Although change did not happen overnight, Congress strengthened federal oversight in the years that followed. The Steamboat Act of 1871 expanded licensing requirements to include ship masters and chief mates, not just pilots and engineers. It also created a more comprehensive marine safety code, required regular federal inspections of hulls, boilers, and equipment, and established stronger national oversight of steamboat operations. The disaster also encouraged private boiler inspection and insurance organizations to improve safety standards, helping eliminate many of the dangerous boiler designs that had contributed to tragedies like the Sultana. While these reforms came too late for those aboard, they helped make America’s waterways far safer for future generations.

Although the Army investigated the disaster and prosecuted one officer, his conviction was overturned. No one was ultimately held accountable.

Helena, Arkansas. April 27, 1865. Ill-fated Sultana. The overloaded steamboat Sultana on the Mississippi River the day before her boilers exploded and she sank on April 27th. The passengers included ca. 1,880 Union soldiers heading home at the end of the Civil War; more than 1,100 of these men died in the disaster. Phase One P 65+

SS Columbia: The Ship That Proved Edison Right

In 1880, a passenger steamship named the SS Columbia was launched in Chester, Pennsylvania. She was built for the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, and she was intended to carry passengers and freight between San Francisco and Portland. Her lasting claim to fame, however, came after the company’s president, Henry Villard, witnessed Thomas Edison’s New Year’s Eve demonstration at Menlo Park. Villard was fascinated by Edison’s new incandescent lighting system and decided to have it installed aboard his new ship. The Columbia became the first commercial installation of Edison’s system. I want to thank Jim Adams for a post about electricity that spurred me on to finish this.

In the spring of 1880, Edison’s incandescent light was still largely experimental. His team now had to install delicate glass bulbs, primitive wiring, and early dynamos aboard a ship that would constantly pitch, roll, and vibrate. Dampness and salt air presented additional problems. It was one thing to make electric bulbs glow during a demonstration at Menlo Park. It was another to keep them burning aboard a steamship traveling around South America.

Edison entrusted the shipboard installation to a team that included his associate Francis Upton. The men ran insulated wiring through the passenger spaces and connected more than one hundred lamps to dynamos below. On May 2, 1880, the system was tested in New York, and electric light filled the ship’s saloon and cabins. Passengers could not operate the cabin lights themselves; a steward controlled each one from a locked rosewood box outside the room. The system had worked at the pier. Now it had to survive a ten-week voyage around South America.

When she set sail on her maiden voyage from New York to Portland, Oregon, she was a floating wonder. The route required sailing all the way around South America, as the Panama Canal did not yet exist. During a stop in Rio de Janeiro, the Emperor of Brazil even climbed aboard just to witness the spectacle of her glowing electric interior. The voyage was a massive success; Edison’s dynamos performed flawlessly, and the ship proved to the world that electric lighting was safe and practical for everyday use.

For the next 27 years, the SS Columbia became a reliable ship of the Pacific Coast, carrying passengers and cargo between Portland and San Francisco. She braved the rough storms and even earned a reputation for heroism, rescuing survivors from the wreck of the SS Alaskan in 1889. She was a symbol of progress, smoothly bridging the gap between the old world of wooden sailing ships and the new era of steel and electricity. She was also at a dock in the 1906 San Franciso Earthquake (you can see her listing in the pictures below) but survived.

Her fate would change on a dense, foggy night on July 21, 1907. While navigating off the coast of Shelter Cove, California, the SS Columbia had a lumber schooner named the San Pedro coming at her. Both ships were going at an unsafe speed through the fog. Before Captain Peter Doran could steer clear, the San Pedro crashed directly into the Columbia’s starboard side. The San Pedro’s bow tore deeply into the Columbia’s starboard side, opening her hull to the sea. Water poured in rapidly, and the steamship began settling by the bow.

The collision jolted sleeping passengers awake and sent them rushing onto a sharply listing deck. Outside, darkness and thick fog concealed both the surrounding water and any ships that might be close enough to help. Captain Doran remained at his post while crew members and passengers tried to lower lifeboats, distribute life preservers, and throw anything that could float into the sea. Some boats were launched, but the Columbia sank too quickly for all of them to be used.

Captain Doran showed immense bravery. He stayed on the bridge, refusing to leave his post, and shouted instructions through the dark to help lower the lifeboats until the ocean rose up and carried him away. The crew and several heroic passengers worked entirely by touch. They frantically untied lifeboats, handed out life jackets, and threw anything that could float into the sea. Only a few lifeboats were successfully launched before the ship’s angle became too steep.

As the bow sank deeper, the stern of the Columbia lifted high into the air. Terrified passengers clung to the deck railings until they could no longer hold on. In roughly 8-10 minutes after the collision, the steamship slipped beneath the waves. Surviving passengers and crew were left floating in the freezing, foggy void, clinging to overturned boats, deck chairs, wooden doors, and wreckage, waiting in the dark to see if anyone would rescue them.

There were 251 aboard the ship. Tragically, 88 people lost their lives in the disaster. 163 people survived the sinking and were successfully pulled from the ocean. Three ships helped to rescue the Columbia’s passengers. Three ships took part in the rescue. The San Pedro, the vessel that had struck the Columbia, became an unexpected refuge. Her large cargo of redwood lumber helped keep her damaged hull afloat, and approximately eighty survivors reached or were pulled aboard her. The steamships George W. Elder and Roanoke also arrived and assisted at the scene. The George W. Elder took survivors aboard and later helped tow the damaged San Pedro toward shore.

A ship famous for bringing light to the sea was ultimately lost in darkness and fog.

The San Pedro after the collision… I don’t know how she made it, but she survived the collision. I can’t believe she was floating at this point!

The SS Columbia lying on her starboard side at the Union Iron Works after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Bear Photo Company.

SS Princess Alice: Tragedy on the Thames

Yes, this is another sinking, but what the passengers found themselves in after the ship went down is something no one should ever experience. I said it in my Mark Twain post, and I can’t say it enough: maritime regulations are written in blood. The sinking of the SS Princess Alice is another painful reminder of that truth. It also reminds us that some disasters are made worse not just by what happens on the water, but by conditions that should have been addressed long before tragedy struck.

On September 3, 1878, the crowded passenger paddle steamer was returning to London after a day excursion along the Kent coast. Some children were asleep, and a band was still playing as the ship rounded Tripcock Point near dusk. Then the Princess Alice and the much larger collier Bywell Castle suddenly found themselves on a collision course.

The iron bow of the Bywell Castle struck the Princess Alice near her starboard paddle box. The smaller ship broke apart and sank in about four minutes. Passengers were in the water before many of them understood what had happened.

The investigations did not produce one simple answer. The coroner’s jury found that both vessels had contributed to the collision. The Board of Trade blamed the Princess Alice for failing to follow the proper navigation rule, while the High Court later held both ships responsible.

Although the Bywell Castle survived the collision, her crew immediately turned their attention to rescuing survivors from the Thames. They were joined by police, watermen, dock workers, and ordinary citizens who rushed to help. In disasters like this, history often remembers the ships, but it should also remember those who risked their own lives trying to save people they had never met.

The ship went down at the point where enormous amounts of untreated sewage and industrial waste from London entered the Thames. About an hour before the collision, nearby outfalls had released an estimated 75 million imperial gallons of untreated sewage, about 90 million U.S. gallons, into the Thames.

Survivors found themselves struggling not only in the water but in what contemporary accounts described as foul, polluted sludge. Some survivors who were pulled from the river later died after swallowing the polluted water. Several survivors who were pulled from the river later died from swallowing the sewage water. Between 600 and 700 people died. They didn’t keep a correct ship manifest, so the exact number is not known.

That tragedy had consequences far beyond the sinking itself. It shocked Victorian Britain and added urgency to efforts to improve London’s sewage and public health systems. In other words, the Princess Alice wasn’t just a maritime disaster; it became part of the story of modern sanitation.

The collision put hundreds of passengers into the Thames. Years of neglect made the river itself part of the disaster. After this, things started to change and raw waste would not go into the river. London built purification and treatment facilities directly at the existing Barking (Northern Outfall) and Crossness (Southern Outfall) pumping stations.

SS Princess Alice sinking after colliding with the SS Bywell Castle on the River Thames, United Kingdom, drawing by Q Michetti, engraving by Francesco Canedi from L’Illustrazione Italiana, Year 5, No 39, September 29, 1878.

PS General Slocum: New York’s Forgotten Tragedy

St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church chartered the PS General Slocum for its annual outing on June 15, 1904. It was a tradition that families in New York’s German neighborhood looked forward to every year. Mothers and children dressed for a day. They carried food, greeted friends, and walked toward the East Third Street pier. A band was waiting aboard the ship.

To the families stepping onto her decks, the General Slocum looked ready for them. She was a large and familiar excursion steamer with three decks, electric lights, and a brightly decorated interior. She had carried thousands of passengers around New York Harbor.

The General Slocum had passed a government safety inspection only weeks earlier. On paper, she was ready to carry passengers. She wasn’t. Her fire hoses were old and rotten. Her lifeboats were secured in place and would prove impossible to launch. Many of her life preservers were thirteen years old. The crew had never held a proper fire drill. Everything needed to save the passengers appeared to be aboard the ship. Almost none of it could be trusted.

The families now filling her decks knew none of this. To them, the General Slocum was simply the ship that would carry them away from New York City for a day. The neighborhood was known as Kleindeutschland. German immigrants had built churches, shops, clubs, and homes there. On that Wednesday morning, families from St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church were preparing for their annual Sunday school picnic. For many of them, it was one of the happiest days of the year. The ship filled up with passengers, predominantly women and children, to have a great day out.

The General Slocum left the East Third Street pier at about 9:30 that morning. Roughly half an hour later, as she passed East 90th Street and approached the dangerous waters of Hell Gate, smoke began rising from below the main deck.

The exact cause of the fire was never established. It appears to have started in or near the lamp room, where straw, oily rags, and lamp oil gave the flames plenty of fuel. A discarded match or cigarette may have started it, but no one could say for certain.

One of the first warnings reportedly came from a teenage passenger named Frank Perditski. After noticing smoke, he rushed into the pilothouse and tried to alert Captain William Van Schaick. The captain was concentrating on navigating Hell Gate and dismissed him. Another boy warned a deckhand, who stopped to investigate before notifying the mate. The mate then went to see the fire for himself before carrying the warning to the bridge. By the time Van Schaick received an official report, several valuable minutes had been lost.

The fire spread rapidly through the wooden ship. Some mothers placed life preservers on their children, believing they would keep them afloat, only to see them sink in the river. Many of the preservers were thirteen years old. Their canvas coverings split apart and released cork that had deteriorated into powder.

The clothing worn at the time made escape even harder. Women often wore long dresses, petticoats, corsets, and heavy shoes. Once soaked, those clothes became tremendously heavy. It is a detail easily overlooked today, but it contributed to the loss of life in this and other maritime disasters of the period.

After receiving the official warning, Van Schaick ordered full speed ahead. Within approximately thirty seconds, he directed the pilot toward North Brother Island. Investigators later faulted him for passing closer places where the ship might have been beached. Van Schaick maintained that he feared setting fire to waterfront buildings and oil tanks and believed North Brother Island offered the safest landing. Whatever his intentions, the ship’s speed and the headwind drove the flames toward the crowded stern.

When the burning ship reached North Brother Island, doctors, nurses, and even patients from Riverside Hospital rushed to the shoreline. Mary McCann, a teenage patient recovering from illness, entered the water and reportedly helped save several children.

Help also came from nearby Rikers Island. Two prisoners, John Merther and Dan Casey, persuaded their supervisor, Dr. Nathan E. Broder, to take them across in a rowboat. The three repeatedly pulled victims from the river, carried them to North Brother Island, and returned for more until they were too exhausted to continue.

Tugboats, fireboats, police boats, and private vessels converged on the scene. Several tug crews pressed their boats against portions of the Slocum that had not yet been consumed, allowing passengers to jump onto their lower decks. Others pulled survivors from the water as the burning ship came to rest against the island.

The exact number aboard and the final casualty count vary among historical sources. The figures most often given are 1,021 dead and only 321 survivors. Most of the victims were women and children.

The disaster devastated Kleindeutschland. Widowers and surviving families moved away, and some people reportedly took their own lives under the weight of their grief. The neighborhood was already changing, but the loss of so many families accelerated its decline. Although most of those aboard were German American, Jewish and Italian New Yorkers were also among the dead.

The investigation uncovered one final betrayal. Some of the cork supplied for life preservers had been mixed with cheaper granulated material. Pieces of iron had been inserted to bring the cork blocks up to the required weight. The devices had been made to satisfy an inspection requirement on paper, not necessarily to keep someone alive in the water. Managers of the cork company were indicted, but none was convicted.

There was enough blame to go around. Captain Van Schaick carried responsibility for the lack of fire drills and for never discovering that the equipment aboard his ship could not be trusted. The owners had failed to maintain and replace that equipment. Government inspectors then gave the public confidence in an unsafe ship by certifying her only weeks before the disaster. None of them needed to be a villain. The system allowed each of them to behave as though someone else had checked. Sometimes that is all it takes for a disaster to happen.

Ships do not have to be perfect. Neither do people. But when lives depend on safety equipment, “good enough” is not good enough. The passengers aboard the General Slocum trusted that the hoses would work, the lifebelts would float, and the inspection meant something. They deserved better!

The General Slocum disaster remains the deadliest maritime disaster in New York City history. Until September 11, 2001, it was the deadliest man-made disaster the city had ever experienced. Yet most people have never heard of it.

Today, the Slocum Memorial Fountain stands in Tompkins Square Park. Carved into its pink marble are the faces of two children and the words:

“They were Earth’s purest children, young and fair.”

RMS Olympic: Old Reliable

If I could snap my fingers and have any ship alive and well today? The RMS Olympic would be it! There was a reason my first real post was The Three Sisters. The ship survived and served passengers and the WWI effort for 24 years.

Before the Titanic’s maiden voyage, it was actually the RMS Olympic that was White Star Line’s best-known and most celebrated liner. She had already established her reputation with passengers and the public. Only after the Titanic disaster did history forever shift the spotlight to her younger sister. While Titanic became the legend, Olympic became the ship that proved the design could succeed.

I’ve grown to love this ship even more than her almost twin younger sister, Titanic. Olympic never sank. She survived World War I and returned to passenger service afterward, sailing for nearly twenty-four years. In many ways, she became everything the Olympic-class ships were meant to be. She carried thousands of American and Canadian troops during the war and quietly earned the nickname “Old Reliable.” The press had called Titanic “unsinkable,” but Olympic was the ship that truly lived up to that reputation.

She didn’t become famous because she sank. She became famous because she didn’t. To me, she is the most beautiful ocean liner ever built. She isn’t flashy. She is simply regal and timeless. Others like the Normandie and the SS United States were beautiful, but Olympic’s outward appearance was hard to beat.

The White Star Line built the RMS Olympic because they were locked in a battle with the Cunard Line in the early 1900s. Cunard had shocked the shipping world with the fast and luxurious RMS Lusitania and RMS Mauretania. Those ships held the speed records of the Atlantic and became symbols of British pride. White Star knew they could not win by building the fastest ships. They would create huge liners built around comfort, size, and luxury instead of outright speed. That idea became the Olympic-class ships, Olympic, Titanic, and later Britannic.

When Olympic entered service in 1911, people were stunned by her size. She had grand staircases, elevators, electric lights, Turkish baths, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, and first-class rooms that looked more like expensive hotels. Even second-class accommodations were considered better than first-class on many older ships. White Star advertised her as a steady and comfortable ship for wealthy travelers and immigrants alike. She was not designed to break speed records. She was designed to make passengers feel safe and relaxed crossing the Atlantic. That was her selling point. While Lusitania and Mauretania were faster, they were also known for rolling in rough seas. Olympic was built for comfort, and passengers appreciated the smoother ride. She had quite a few captains in her career. Captain Edward John Smith was the first captain and later would go to captain the Titanic.

After the loss of the RMS Titanic in 1912, Olympic suddenly carried a heavy burden. Many people feared that the Olympic-class ships were cursed or unsafe. But Olympic slowly rebuilt public confidence. She returned to service with major safety improvements, including more lifeboats and a strengthened double hull. She then became a war hero. Olympic was converted into a troopship during World War I. If you’d like to learn how passenger liners were transformed for military service, see our companion page: From Luxury to War: How Ocean Liners Became Troopships.

During World War I, she served as a troopship and carried thousands of soldiers across dangerous waters. In 1914, she spotted HMS Audacious, a battleship that was sinking. She stopped and risked being hit by a U-boat to rescue over 200 sailors. For a more complete story, go to the companion page. She even rammed and sank a German U-boat in 1918, something almost unheard of for a passenger liner. A reconstructed animation of this event is at the bottom of the page. She was also dressed up in her Dazzle Paint (She looked like a sixties rock band logo).

She kept sailing while many famous ships disappeared through war, accidents, or financial trouble. Passengers trusted her. Crews respected her. She crossed the Atlantic hundreds of times and carried everyone from immigrants to celebrities. In many ways, Olympic became the ship White Star had hoped for from the beginning: dependable, elegant, and respected. She even became something of a movie star, appearing in several films that can still be seen today. Among her passengers were Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Prince Edward, Cary Grant, Marie Curie, and many others. The Olympic ended up completing 257 round trips across the Atlantic (not counting the war) and traveled over 1.8 million miles.

On November 18, 1929, while crossing the North Atlantic near the resting place of her sister, the Titanic, Olympic experienced an unusual vibration that ran through the entire ship. At the time, no one knew why. The answer came later: she had been near one of the largest undersea earthquakes ever recorded in the North Atlantic. It was a strange coincidence that forever linked the two sisters once again, not through tragedy this time, but through one of nature’s most powerful events.

Among Olympic’s crew was stewardess Violet Jessop, who was aboard during the 1911 collision with HMS Hawke. She later survived the sinking of Titanic as a stewardess and Britannic as a wartime nurse. Depending on how you look at it, Jessop was either the unluckiest woman ever to work at sea, or the luckiest.

By the mid-1930s, Olympic was still a wonderful ship, but the world around her had changed. The Great Depression hurt the shipping business badly. Fewer people could afford ocean travel. Newer ships were also coming along that were faster and more modern. White Star Line was struggling for money and merged with Cunard in 1934. Olympic was already over 20 years old by then. Even though she was still running well, she cost a lot to operate and still had steam engines. In the end, the company decided to scrap her in 1935. It shocked many people because she had survived collisions, wartime service, bad storms, and decades at sea. To many, she still seemed full of life. Even in retirement, Olympic continued to serve. Her dismantling at Thomas W. Ward’s scrapyard in Jarrow provided nearly two years of employment during the depths of the Great Depression.

It’s easy to imagine what might have been. Had Olympic been preserved like the Queen Mary, millions of people could have walked her decks and experienced the closest thing to sailing on the Titanic. But forget the Titanic; it’s the friggin Olympic! But those were the years of the Great Depression, and preserving a ship wasn’t a realistic option. You cannot look at things like that with presentism. Even so, Olympic still lives on. Parts of her survive today! She is in the White Swan Hotel, where her beautiful wood paneling, windows, and fixtures continue to be admired. In a small way, the ship still welcomes guests and is not a museum piece. Parts of her are still working after over 100 years.

If I could travel back in time and sail on any ocean liner, Olympic would be my choice. Others were faster. Some were even more luxurious. But I would choose the ship that quietly did her job for nearly a quarter of a century and earned the nickname Old Reliable. I can’t think of a finer legacy than that.

Olympic wearing her World War I DAZZLE paint camouflage. The bold geometric patterns weren’t meant to hide the ship. They were designed to make it more difficult for German U-boat commanders to judge her speed, course, and heading through a submarine periscope.

A 30-minute short documentary of Olympic

SS Kamloops: One of Lake Superior’s Enduring Mysteries

I want to tell everyone, I’m off on Labor Day on Monday, so I’ll be posting about my favorite ship of all time. It served 24 years in passenger service and in War.

I first heard about this ship when I saw some divers go into it. It’s almost pristine. Lake Superior has preserved this ship almost perfectly. It had a cargo of Lifesavers and toothpaste among other items. The labels look like they were printed yesterday, although it sank in 1927. I just heard a phrase on a documentary: “the ocean is a liquid archive.” It really is; it holds the answers to mysteries that we will never know. Although this didn’t happen in the ocean, the meaning is the same.

The SS Kamloops was built in 1924 in England for Canada Steamship Lines. She was a smaller freighter made for the old canal system before the St. Lawrence Seaway changed Great Lakes shipping forever. Most of her work was hauling cargo across the Great Lakes. Coal, machinery, food, and supplies filled her holds during her short career. By December 1927, the shipping season was almost over. Lake Superior was already turning dangerous with ice, snow, and freezing winds moving in across the water.

On December 6, 1927, the SS Kamloops left Port Arthur, Ontario, headed for Fort William, which is now Thunder Bay. She carried a crew of 22 souls. Not long after leaving, a massive winter storm swept across Lake Superior. Winds howled and ice built up on ships across the lake. Other captains later said it was one of the worst storms they had seen. The Kamloops vanished without sending a distress call. Search crews found bits of wreckage later, but the ship itself disappeared into the cold water of Superior. For nearly 50 years, nobody knew exactly where she rested.

When the SS Kamloops disappeared in a Lake Superior storm in December of 1927, many assumed that all 22 people on board went down with the ship. The crew included two women, stewardess Netty Grafton and assistant stewardess Alice Bettridge. For months there was no sign of the vessel. Then, when spring arrived, wreckage and bodies began washing up on Isle Royale. What investigators found suggested that at least some of the crew survived the sinking itself.

Several bodies were discovered on the island along with pieces of a lifeboat and oars. Some of the victims were wearing life preservers. This led many to believe that a group had managed to abandon the ship and reach shore. One body believed to be First Mate Henry Genest was found inland from the beach. That detail has always stood out. It suggests that he may have survived long enough to leave the shoreline and search for shelter before succumbing to the cold.

One of the crew members found was Alice Bettridge. Her story became even more tragic when a bottle containing a message was reportedly found on the Canadian shore of Lake Superior. The note was said to have been written by Alice. She said, “I am the last one left alive, freezing and starving to death on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. I just want Mom and Dad to know my fate.” Whether every detail of the story can be proven today is debated, but her parents said it was her handwriting. Netty Grafton is thought to still be in the Kamloops.

The most accepted theory today is that several crew members escaped the sinking and reached Isle Royale alive. They found themselves stranded on a remote island during one of the harshest times of the year. With little shelter, little food, and no way to call for help, they eventually died from exposure. It is one of the saddest stories on Lake Superior. They survived the storm and the sinking, only to lose their lives on land.

50 years later, in 1977, divers finally found the wreck near Isle Royale. The ship sat deep underwater and was still in surprisingly good condition because of the freezing temperatures. The Kamloops soon became one of the most talked-about wrecks on the Great Lakes.

Part of that came from the story of “Old Whitey” or “Grandpa,” the preserved body of one of the crew members that is still inside the engine room, floating around the room (Don’t worry, it will not be in the photos). Divers told stories for years about strange feelings around the ship. Ghost stories followed. But underneath all the legends is the real story. Twenty-two souls went out on Lake Superior in winter and never came home. That’s the important part. This sadly shows that no matter how many lifeboats, wireless equipment, and safety equipment you have, anything can happen.

SS Andrea Doria: The Last Great Ocean Liner Disaster

This is one ocean liner I had heard of long before I started this blog. She was another beauty that didn’t last as long as she should have. She had all the latest innovations of her day, including radar, a double hull, and watertight compartments. Yet, like the Titanic before her, one night in 1956 changed everything. The crash was eerily close to what happened to the Empress of Ireland except it took a lot longer to sink. There are so many stories connected to this ship. The “miracle girl,” the concept car that was in the cargo hold, the hero ship, Ile de France, and many more.

I also want to recommend the book The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria: The Sinking of the World’s Most Glamorous Ship by Greg King and Penny Wilson. It helped me immensely while writing this post. The same authors wrote one I read on the Lusitania.

Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember (about the Titanic) had been published the previous year, and several passengers were reading the bestselling account of the Titanic during the crossing from 44 years before. For at least one passenger, the story offered reassurance rather than fear. Remembering how the Carpathia had answered Titanic’s distress calls, she believed that other ships would come for them as well. She was right. Before the night was over, the Andrea Doria would have her own rescue fleet, most famously the brightly lit Île de France.

She was built by the Italian Line as a symbol of Italy’s recovery after World War II. Named for the famous sixteenth-century admiral Andrea Doria, she was launched in 1951 and entered service in January 1953. Elegant inside and out, she quickly earned a reputation as one of the most beautiful ocean liners in the world.

The Andrea Doria was also considered one of the safest ships in the world at the time, thanks to an advanced system of watertight compartments and double hull construction. She was built to remain afloat even if two of her compartments flooded, a design that gave her operators and passengers great confidence in her seaworthiness. For several years she sailed the transatlantic route between Genoa and New York.

On the night of July 25, 1956, her fate would change. She was approaching the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, in dense fog. Traveling in the opposite direction was the Swedish ocean liner MS Stockholm. Through a combination of navigational misjudgments, radar misinterpretation, and the fog, the two ships collided. The reinforced icebreaker bow of the Stockholm struck the starboard side of the Andrea Doria, tearing a huge gash into her hull and opening several compartments to the sea. The Stockholm’s bow didn’t merely puncture the Andrea Doria’s outer hull. It drove roughly 30 feet into the ship, cutting through passenger cabins (as we will tragically see) and tanks before the two vessels separated.

Linda Morgan was fourteen years old, traveling on the Andrea Doria’s final crossing with her mother, stepfather, and younger half-sister, eight-year-old Joan Cianfarra. Linda and Joan shared cabin 52, while their mother and stepfather were next door in cabin 54. Both cabins sat almost directly in the path of the Stockholm’s bow.

When the two ships collided just after 11 p.m. on July 25, 1956, the Stockholm’s reinforced bow tore through the area where Linda was sleeping. What happened next remains one of the most incredible survival stories in maritime history. Somehow, the collision carried Linda from her bed and deposited her among the wreckage on the crushed bow of the Stockholm. She had literally gone from one ship to the other during the collision.

In the darkness and fog, a Stockholm crewman heard a voice calling from the bow wreckage in Spanish, crying for her mother. A Spanish-speaking crew member went to investigate and found Linda there, confused but alive. She reportedly asked him, “I was on the Andrea Doria. Where am I now?” Linda suffered a broken arm and other injuries but had survived something almost impossible to imagine. Sadly, her stepfather and younger stepsister did not survive. Her mother was badly injured but lived. The newspapers soon gave Linda a name that would follow her afterward: “the Miracle Girl.” Read more about this incredible girl. Read about the other heroes here.

The collision caused the Andrea Doria to list severely to starboard almost immediately, which tragically rendered many of her lifeboats on the port side unusable. Among the ships that answered the distress call was the French ocean liner SS Île de France. Her captain immediately turned his ship around and raced toward the scene. The Île de France would take hundreds of survivors aboard and become one of the heroes of the disaster. The disaster claimed 46 lives, most of whom died in the initial impact rather than in the sinking itself.

A severe list is more than just a ship leaning to one side. As the angle increases, openings that normally sit safely above the waterline can become submerged, allowing even more water inside. Lifeboats can also become difficult or impossible to launch, and simply moving through corridors and stairways becomes dangerous. Most frightening of all, if a ship loses enough stability, the list can continue until she capsizes. For most of the 11 hours she was listing, that was a constant worry.

For about eleven hours after the collision, the Andrea Doria remained afloat, slowly listing further as spectators, journalists, and rescue vessels gathered nearby, and photographs and film footage of her final hours became iconic images of the era. Early on the morning of July 26, 1956, she finally capsized and sank beneath the waters off Nantucket, coming to rest on her starboard side at a depth of roughly 240 feet. For three years, she represented Italy’s return to the world’s oceans after the devastation of World War II. It was caught on film for national television at the time.

The wreck of the Andrea Doria remains a very popular, though very dangerous, site for experienced scuba divers. It is sometimes referred to as the “Mount Everest of diving” due to strong currents and deteriorating structure that have claimed the lives of several divers over the decades. The disaster also prompted significant changes in maritime safety regulations, particularly regarding radar use and navigational protocols in low-visibility conditions. Even today, the Andrea Doria is remembered as a symbol of the golden age of ocean liner travel. She was a ship whose beauty and promise were cut short by one foggy night off the New England coast.

There was one remarkable survivor of the Andrea Doria disaster that remained with us until very recently: the MS Stockholm herself. Repaired after the collision, she went on to have an extraordinary career under several owners and names, eventually sailing as the cruise ship Astoria. Her final passenger service came in 2020, an incredible 72 years after she entered service. After several years laid up in Rotterdam, the former Stockholm was finally sold for recycling in 2025. The ship whose bow had disappeared deep inside the Andrea Doria had survived her by nearly seventy years.

For all of you CAR FANS…the Andrea Doria was carrying a cool concept car, and it is still down there, part of the Doria now.

SS Fleurus: The Day the Circus Ship Caught Fire

I decided to cover this ship because of Shirley. You will meet Shirley halfway through the article. The SS Fleurus disaster was a remarkable rescue in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. In 1963, a converted passenger and freight ship carrying the Al G. Kelly and Miller Brothers Circus caught fire at the wharf and began sinking. Town residents, firefighters, and circus workers suddenly found themselves trying to rescue not only people, but elephants, lions, horses, zebras, and other animals from a burning ship.

Fleurus was built in France in 1926 for Canada’s Anticosti Shipping Company. She was launched on March 28, 1926, and completed the following month. Long before her unusual career as a circus ship, she carried passengers and cargo through the Gulf and along the St. Lawrence, including service to Anticosti Island.

In 1963, the Al G. Kelly and Miller Brothers Circus bought the aging Fleurus and refitted her as a floating base for a Canadian coastal tour. Instead of moving everything overland, the circus could sail its performers, equipment, and animals directly from one port town to another. Spaces aboard the ship were adapted for the performers and a menagerie that included big cats, horses, zebras, and three adult elephants. To complete the transformation, the hull was painted the circus’s vivid orange.

After two shows in Yarmouth, Fleurus was being loaded for the short trip to Shelburne when a fire broke out in the engine room. Smoke quickly spread through the ship, and firefighters rushed to the wharf. But fighting a fire aboard a ship creates another problem. The tremendous amount of water being pumped aboard had nowhere to go. As water accumulated inside Fleurus, her stability worsened and she began listing toward the wharf. The firefighters were battling the flames while the water they needed to save the ship was also helping pull her down.

That list may have helped save some of the animals. With the ship leaning close enough to shore, rescuers laid heavy planks between the deck and the wharf and began leading the elephants across. One of those elephants was named Shirley. A crane was used to lift animal cages from the upper deck while firefighters stood nearby in case any of the frightened big cats escaped. At one point, a sling carrying a cage containing two lions broke, but the cage held and the lions survived.

There were other close calls. A horse named Sparkle escaped into the harbor and became trapped beneath the wharf. Circus worker Bob Dawson went into the water and managed to guide the frightened horse back out. A Brahma bull also ended up in the water and swam to shore.

All the performers and almost every animal survived. One zebra, trapped below deck as the ship settled, was the only animal fatality recorded by the Nova Scotia Archives. Fleurus was eventually towed away and deliberately sunk, while the circus lost much of its equipment and possessions. Today, the story is remembered less for the loss of the ship than for what happened beside that Yarmouth wharf, where firefighters, circus workers, and local residents came together to save animals from a burning and sinking vessel.

One of the most remarkable survivors of Fleurus wasn’t a person at all. Shirley was an Asian elephant born in 1948 who spent about twenty years performing in circuses. Her life after Fleurus would become a story of its own. She survived a badly broken leg in 1974, and three years later was moved to the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo, where she lived as the zoo’s only elephant for 22 years.

By 1999, Shirley was getting older, and her caretakers wanted her to have more room and, perhaps more importantly, the company of other elephants. Her longtime caretaker, Solomon James, accompanied her to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

Something remarkable happened after she arrived. Shirley immediately showed an extraordinary reaction to another elephant named Jenny. The two strained to reach one another through the bars separating their stalls. It was eventually discovered that Shirley and Jenny had performed together in the same circus 24 years earlier. They appeared to remember each other.

For the next seven years, Shirley and Jenny were nearly inseparable. Their reunion and relationship were featured in the PBS documentary The Urban Elephant. Shirley remained at the Tennessee sanctuary for the rest of her long life. She died there in 2021 at the age of 72. The timeline of Shirley PLUS her time in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.