Rammed At Dawn

Inspired by Max’s blog, ‘Old Steam Ships’ –
RMS Olympic: Old Reliable. Please be sure
to check out Max’s site for more information,
videos, and photos of RMS Olympic.

During WWI, RMS Olympic served as a troop ship, carrying thousands of soldiers across dangerous waters. This is a dramatized account of what happened early in the morning of May 12, 1918, as seen through the eyes of a young soldier in the US Army on his way to France and to battle.

Private Thomas Webb of the 59th Infantry had learned to sleep through almost anything …. good thing, since arriving in France was still weeks away. He had not, however, learned to sleep through this.

It was not the collision that woke him. It was the guns.

The 6-inch deck guns of the RMS Olympic erupted before 4:00 AM, hammering the darkness with a violence that threw men from their bunks below deck. In the cramped berths where the 4th Division’s soldiers were packed, chaos erupted instantly. Someone shouted that they were under attack. Someone else swore they’d heard a torpedo. Nobody knew anything, and everybody was certain of everything.

Then came the shudder …. a deep groan that seemed to pass through the very bones of the ship, felt as much as heard. Seconds later, a grinding roar tore through the hull beneath their feet, metal against metal, prolonged and intense, as if the ship itself were being gutted from below.

Webb was certain, in that moment, that the Olympic was dying.

But all the training kicked in and held. Men reached for lifebelts with shaking hands, falling into practiced lines toward muster stations, boots slapping the steel decks in the dark. It was discipline, not calm, that moved them …. the same discipline that would carry them through the trenches soon enough. And then, strangely, a new fear crept in beside the first: the ship hadn’t slowed down. If anything, she was pulling harder, engines climbing toward full speed. She was not sinking; she was running.

Word passed in fragments through the passageways. Not a torpedo. Not an attack, not really …. more a kill. The Olympic had rammed a German U-boat and cut clean through it.

Those who reached the decks or found a porthole to press their faces against saw the proof written across the water in the grey half-light of dawn: a black slick spreading and shimmering, a churn of white foam where a submarine’s hull had been, and scattered wreckage bobbing in the ship’s wake. Among it, impossibly small shapes in the water …. German sailors clinging to whatever would float, watching the great ocean liner recede.

Olympic did not stop for them. Admiralty orders were absolute: a stationary ship in these waters was an invitation to every other U-boat prowling the Channel. So she left them behind for the American destroyer USS Davis to retrieve, and kept running toward Southampton.

For the soldiers of the 59th, relief came slower than fear had. It settled in over hours, then days, as the shock gave way to something closer to reverence. They easily could have become the victims of another accident of history, destined for a watery grave, but a British captain’s nerve had denied the sea its due.

So when they reached port, the men did something no order required. They pooled their pay …. dollars meant for letters home, for small comforts …. and commissioned a bronze plaque, to be mounted in one of the ship’s grand lounges. Its words were simple, permanent, and grateful:

This tablet presented by the 59th Regiment United States Infantry commemorates the sinking of the German submarine U-103 by the Olympic on 12^th May 1918… on the voyage from New York to Southampton with American troops.

They had sailed into war as passengers. They arrived as witnesses to a miracle, and made certain it would not be forgotten.

NAR©2026

Nancy’s Notes: Dazzle camouflage is a bold pattern of contrasting geometric shapes used mostly on warships in WWI and WWII. It does not blend a ship into the ocean, nor is it used for hiding. Rather, it uses striking lines and contrasting colors to break up the ship’s shape, making it difficult for enemy gunners to figure out the ship’s speed, how far away it is, and the direction it is moving.

This is “RMS Olympic – Pride of the White Star Line” by The Longest Johns

This is a clip from the 2022 movie “Operation Seawolf”

RMS Olympic: Old Reliable

^{Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated, and may not be used without permission. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.}