Hello All: Wow, is there an echo in here? I guess everyone is in "summer mode" and at the beach, boat (I am), backyard or whatever! It's pretty quiet on here but that's ok, Thomas probably needs a little "down time"! Anyway, I ran across this site about the Olympic vs the Nantucket Lightship on the morning of May 15, 1934. It is a short account of what happened (7 of 11 crew members of the Lightship killed). This site has an artist's rendition of the collision which, to me, looks a bit spooky. Interesting to note that Olympic was doing 20 knots in a dense fog when this happened. Hmm, 20 kts in a dense fog, pre radar era, seems pretty excessive to me! This, I believe, was one of the few black marks on the Olympic's busy history and probably spelled the beginning of the end for the old girl. Here is the site..take a look.

http://www.mardigrasfun.com/bsp/200th/nantuck/nantuck.htm

Regards, Peter

-- Peter Nivling (pcnivling@capecod.net), July 09, 1998

Answers

Hi Peter:

Interesting post, but I think the fate of Olympic was already sealed by 1934. What with the depression forcing the merger of Cunard and White Star, and Olympic being a pretty out of date ship by then, there was no chance that she would be kept around.

My understanding is that had the depression not hit and forced the merger, White Star would have built a new set of 1000 foot, 80,000 ton flag ships to replace the Olympic and Majestic. They would have been White Star's version of the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. At least one was slated to be ready by 1933 or 1934. Only the very beginings of a keel were laid before the crash hit, and all materials were subsequently sent to other Cunard-White Star projects.

It's really too bad they never got to build them; I'm sure they would have been beautiful ships. Maybe instead of the Queen Mary, we would have a 1000 foot, buff-funneled liner in Long Beach harbor to vist in 1998.

-- Thomas Shoebotham (cathytom@ix.netcom.com), July 09, 1998.