Were the Olympic liner series flawed?

Answer 1

This is a complicated question. Certainly the ships were not unsinkable, but it is actually impossible to make an unsinkable ship. Olympic and Titanic both had 15 watertight compartments that did not rise the full height of the ship, so that once the water in the forward compartments of Titanic rose above a certain level it spilled over into the next compartment, meaning that the ship sank. In addition both Olympic and Titanic had single-skin hulls, meaning that there was only a single layer of steel between the ocean and the interior of the ship, in contrast to the double-hull construction of other, more advanced liners.

Following the sinking of the Titanic, these flaws were however partially corrected on the unfinished Britannic, the third ship in the class. She was given a double hull, so that had she struck an iceberg as Titanic did she would probably not have sunk. Six of her fifteen watertight compartments were extended to 'B' Deck; again, if this had been the case in Titanic, she would not have sunk. Thus the flaws of the original design that were shown up by the Titanic were corrected in Britannic.

Yet of the three Olympic Class liners, only Olympic ever did the job that she was built for, carrying passengers from Liverpool to New York. Titanic, as we all know, sank on her maiden voyage, while Britannic sank in the Mediterranean while serving as a hospital ship in world War I, despite her modifications. She was the victim of enemy action, either a mine or a torpedo struck her bows, creating a list that meant that water entered through portholes that had been opened to ventilate her wards - a human error that negated her design modifications and led to her sinking.

The Olympic, on the other hand, sank other ships! On her maiden voyage she collided with a Royal Navy cruiser in New York Harbour. While serving as a troopship during World War I she rammed and sank a German U-Boat, U-103, and finally in 1933 she ran down the Nantucket Lightship and sank it, killing seven of the crew.

Olympic was known as 'Old Reliable', and served until 1935, when she was scrapped, following the merger of the White Star Line with Cunard, whose ships were technically superior. She may have been flawed, but she was good enough.