OLYMPIC'S LAST VOYAGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22240, 15 October 1935, Page 10

OLYMPIC'S LAST VOYAGE

LINER TO BE BROKEN UP SALUTES AT SOUTHAMPTON British Wireless BUGBY, Oct. 13 The 45,439-ton White Star liner Olympic left Southampton on Friday evening on her last voyage, to the ship'breaking yard at Jarrow. Ships in the harbour sounded their sirens in salute as she passed. The Olympic, which was built by Harland and Wolff, Limited, at Belfast in 1911, was the largest British-built vessel afloat before the launching of the Queen Mary.

The Olympic crossed the Atlantic nearly 1000 times and travelled 1,500,000 miles. After being condemned as unfit for further sea service, she was bought for £IOO,OOO by Sir John Jarvis, of Godalming, Surrey, in order to have the vessel broken ap at Jarrow to provide work for 30P or 400 men for about 15 months and to use the scrap metal obtained to feed a local steel mill to be erected at that port, inaugurating a new industry there. To accommodate the Olympic at Jarrow tho River Tyne had to be specially dredged, the cost of the work being provided by Sir John's son and tho Tyne Commissioners. The Olympic has had a fine record including service during the Great War. She was engaged on the Atlantic run until October, 1914, when the Admiralty requisitioned her as a naval transport, flying tho White Ensign. She covered over 184,000 miles during the war and of tho thousands of people she carried, most of them troops, not a life was lost. The dangers she survived were varied and numerous and her sister ship, tho Britannic, which was commissioned as a hospital ship, was torpedoed and sunk.