I found this White Star Line advertisement in The Western Times – exactly 100 years old. Here they are promoting their premium ships, Olympic and Titanic. Three weeks later the sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of 1,517 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. Meanwhile Olympic‘s first major mishap occurred six months before this advert on 20 September 1911, when she collided with a British warship, HMS Hawke off the Isle of Wight. Olympic became famous as a First World War fully armed troop ship.
“In the early hours of 12 May 1918, while en route for France with US troops under the command of Captain Bertram Fox Hayes, Olympic sighted a surfaced U-boat 500 m (1,600 ft) ahead. Her gunners opened fire at once, and she turned to ram the submarine, which immediately crash dived to 30 m (98 ft) and turned to a parallel course”.
“Almost immediately afterwards Olympic struck the submarine just aft of her conning tower and her port propeller sliced through U-103‘s pressure hull. The crew of U-103 blew her ballast tanks, scuttled and abandoned the submarine. This is the only known incident in World War I in which a merchant vessel sank an enemy warship. Olympic returned to Southampton with at least two hull plates dented and her prow twisted to one side, but not breached”.
Olympic did not stop to pick up survivors, but continued on to Cherbourg”. The ship was decommissioned in 1935 and sold.
