Majestic1922

Once in the North Sea, Bismarck took on her new colours and identity, RMS Majestic, she took her place in an eclectic three ship service, alongside Olympic and Homeric, her particulars were as follows :-

Length 956Ft oa, 915ft 6in pp

Width 100ft

Gross tonnage 56,621 tons

The ship rapidly proved hugely popular with the travelling public, however, it was soon becoming clear that, while she had escaped the top heavy qualities of her elder sister Imperator, she introduced other problems, structurally there seemed to be issues. At first, a first class cabin was flooded, due to cracks in the plating, however a far more serious failure was to occur on 14/12/24, when the C-deck plating fractured from the second funnel uptake, running out to the side of the ship. The Board of Trade revoked her license, having earlier expressed reservations after the first incident. The problems where the calculations were made based on how Hamburg America would use the ship, this was different to White Star, who used their ships all year round, and did not withdraw them during winter, however the fact that this failure had begun in the area of the second funnel casing pointed to the true reason for the failure. Although the split uptakes allowed for a better less restrictive passenger area layout, it inflicted structural penalties that had not been accounted for, as such they became a natural weak point, the corners were square rather than rounded which increased the level of weakness. The ship had to be sent to Harland and Wolff for heavy duty remedial work to strengthen the ship.