The Olympic was the sister ship of the Titanic, and she provided twenty-five years of service.
In every family of siblings there is usually one that will stand out for some reason or another, good or bad. That applies to people as well as other related things, such as ships. And nowhere was this ever truer, than in the trio of White Star sister ships that included the RMS Britannic, RMS Olympic, and RMS Titanic.
The three ships were of the Olympic class, but were not named after the Games. They were given the names of mythological races and thus became the Titanic, Olympic and Gigantic. After the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, the Gigantic was renamed Britannic, out of either superstition, or fear that it would not live up to its original name. The name change didn’t help. Britannic, in service during the war as a hospital ship, was sunk by enemy fire in November, 1916.
The Olympic was actually the first of the trio out of the docks of the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Ireland, in June of 1911. At the helm on her maiden voyage was E.J. Smith, who would go down as Captain with the Titanic, less than a year later. Almost immediately, she brushed hulls with a British war ship, and two of her watertight compartments filled. The ship staggered back to Southampton for repairs, and sailed out again in tip-top condition, which kept her afloat until 1935.
In the years before she was taken apart in the scrap yard, Olympic would once more ram heads with a warship, this time a German one which then sank. It was the only known such incident during WWI.
