The golden era and mixed fortunes of the great Atlantic liners

Cunard and White Star led the pre-WW1 charge to build bigger, faster and more luxurious Atlantic liners. Germany’s ‘Big Three’ liners looked set to go one better but were ceded as war reparations to Great Britain and the US. Words / John Barnes. 

By the early 20th century, rivalry on the high seas involved navies, merchant ships and – the biggest battleground of all – liner traffic on the North Atlantic.

Each year, bigger, faster, and more luxurious vessels were being built to ferry passengers between Europe and the USA.

A major development that would accelerate this competition was the building of the Cunarders Lusitania and Mauretania in 1907. These were the first big liners to adopt steam turbine machinery, and both would capture the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the North Atlantic.

First was Lusitania in 1909, while Mauretania’s record later the same year of a crossing average speed of 26.06 knots, stood for 20 years.

However, even in 1907 when The Shipbuilder magazine published a special on the Mauretania, it remarked that, “as speed increased with the consequent enormous addition to first cost, the opinion gained ground that large, slower speed vessels would afford greater financial success than high-speed liners.”

The problem was not only the cost of the machinery needed to reach high speeds but also the higher fuel consumption. Then there was the tendency to opt for finer hull lines than would be the case for a vessel designed for slower speeds.

Luxury first, speed second

The move to luxury more than outright speed can be seen in White Star’s Olympic class, which were then the largest ships in the world.

Olympic, Titanic and Britannic were the three vessels constructed in Belfast by Harland and Wolff. They would have mixed fortunes.

Olympic, completed in 1911, would remain in service until 1935, while Titanic infamously sank on her maiden voyage in 1912. The third, Britannic, was not finished until 1915 by which time World War 1 had broken out. Britannic was completed as a hospital ship but was mined and sank in the Aegean Sea in 1916.

In 1914, Cunard replied to White Star with the similarly-sized Aquitania, while in Germany the shipping magnate Albert Ballin, general director of the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (better known as HAPAG or the Hamburg-America Line) had already decided to go one better, at least in terms of size.

The ‘Big Three’ German liners

In 1912, Hapag built the first of its ‘Big Three’ quadruple screw, turbine powered ocean liners; the Imperator, followed by Vaterland. The third sister, Bismarck, was under construction at the outbreak of war and completed after it.

The three vessels would represent the latest trends in luxury accommodation while offering a reasonable speed on the Atlantic crossing. However, Ballin’s reasoning for building the vessels was that the increased size, and passenger capacity, would prove more cost effective. They would also cope better with rough weather on the route.

After a limited period on the North Atlantic, at the war’s end all three were ceded as war reparations to Great Britain and the United States.

Imperator

First of the three, completed by AG Vulcan Stettin in June 1913, was the largest passenger ship in the world by gross tonnage at the time. Imperator remained in Hamburg during the war but was briefly taken over by US authorities before being handed over as reparation to Cunard. It became the Berengaria and re-entered north Atlantic service in 1920.

The ship operated on the route for the next 18 years before being retired in 1938. It went for breaking which, due to the Second World War, was not completed until 1946.

Vaterland

Built by Blohm and Voss, Hamburg, and completed in May 1914, Vaterland and Bismarck were 15m longer than Imperator. On completion, Vaterland became the world’s largest liner but was surpassed by Bismarck.

Entering service in May 1914, Vaterland was in New York when war broke out and remained there, unable to return to Germany.

When America entered the war, the ship was seized in April 1917 and renamed Leviathan. She served as a troopship until 1919 and was then acquired by the United States Line. Under the same name, the ship re-entered service in June 1923 and operated until 1933 before being sold for scrap and broken up in Rosyth, Scotland in 1938.

Bismarck

The third in the class was also built by Blohm and Voss. At 56,551 gross tons, the Bismarck was the largest liner in the world until the construction of the Normandie in 1935.

Although launched in June 1914, construction was delayed because of the war and at its end Bismarck passed to White Star Line and was renamed Majestic.

Entering service in May 1922, the ship operated on the North Atlantic route until the mid-1930s before being taken over by the Admiralty just prior to being scrapped. She became the training ship HMS Caledonia and sank after a fire in 1939 but was raised and finally scrapped in 1943.

Comparing the great liners

John Barnes is a former editor of Marine Engineers Review.