RMS Majestic was a British Ocean liner working on the White Star Line’s North Atlantic run, originally launched in 1914 as the Hamburg America Line liner SS Bismarck. At 56,551 gross register tons, she was the largest ship in the White Star Line and the largest ship in the world until completion of in 1935.
The third and largest member of German HAPAG Line's trio of transatlantic liners, her completion was delayed by World War I. The liner never sailed under the German flag except on her sea trials in 1922. Following the war, she was finished by her German builders, handed over to the allies as war reparations and became the White Star Line flagship RMS Majestic, replacing the sunk HMHS Britannic. She was the second White Star ship to bear the name, the first being the RMS Majestic of 1889.
She served successfully throughout the 1920s but the onset of the Great Depression made her increasingly unprofitable. She managed to struggle through the first half of the 1930s before being sold off for scrapping to Thos. W. Ward. She was taken possession of by the British Admiralty before demolition commenced after an agreement was reached with White Star and Thomas Ward. She served the Royal Navy as the training ship HMS Caledonia before catching fire in 1939 and sinking. She was subsequently raised and scrapped in 1943.
Conception and construction
At the beginning of the 1910s, the German shipping companies aspired to regain the domination which had been theirs at the very beginning of the 20th century, and which had been taken from them by the liners of the Cunard Line and the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (White Star Line), in particular , RMS Mauretania and the Olympic-class ships. It was under these circumstances that Albert Ballin, president of Hamburg America Line (HAPAG) who was close to Kaiser Wilhelm II, decided to build three liners intended to be the largest in the world. After considering having the first built by German shipyards, and the next two by the British Harland & Wolff shipyards, he decided to strengthen the patriotic symbolism carried by the trio by having all three built in Germany.
For these three liners, size and comfort were given priority. Ballin was aware that his ships could not compete with their British rivals in terms of speed. He thought of compensating for this problem by offering passengers a higher level of luxury, and called on architect Charles Mewès, who was famous for his decoration of luxury hotels. The ships were intended to transport a large number of passengers, and divided not into three classes, as is generally the case, but instead four, the last being intended for the mass transport of immigrants. The sinking of RMS Titanic, which occurred during the construction of the first of the liners in the series, highlighted the need for enough lifeboats for all passengers, which was a real challenge for ships intended to carry more than 5,000 people in total. The builders therefore distributed the boats in several places on the ships, and more exclusively at the level of the upper deck.
On June 10, 1913, the first ship of the Imperator-class trio, , made its maiden voyage. The second, a slightly larger liner, SS Vaterland, did the same in May 1914. The last of the trio was decided to be named Bismarck. Her keel was laid shortly after the launch of the Vaterland, in the spring of 1913, in the Blohm & Voss shipyards in Hamburg, Germany, under the watchful eyes of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The original project called for the Bismarck to be similar to the Vaterland, which itself differed from the Imperator in several ways, including the fact that the ducts of its chimneys did not descend into the center of the ship, but split into smaller pipes that run along its sides, allowing for larger interior spaces. Bismarck was intended to be the same size as Vaterland, in both tonnage and length, but a miscommunication that Cunard's would be larger made HAPAG demand an extra in length, increasing her gross tonnage. This purported news had already prompted the company to bolt an eagle-shaped figurehead to the Imperator in order to gain some precious meters. In reality, Aquitania was shorter than both Vaterland and Bismarck. As an employee of HAPAG noted with annoyance, these six feet were particularly expensive, since they required a total revision of the plans and the addition of two couples in the center of the ship to allow this modification of the structure. However, this allowed Bismarck to remain the largest liner ever built until the completion of in 1935.