Four-funnel liner

The number of funnels became symbolic of speed and safety,[1] so shipping companies sometimes added false funnels—like the Olympic-class ocean liners—to give an impression of power.

[3] Great Eastern, launched on 31 January 1858 (a full 40 years ahead of any comparable ships), was the only ocean liner to sport five funnels.

[1] The trend of competing shipping lines building four-funnel liners encompassed a very short time span ranging from the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse in 1897 to the RMS Windsor Castle in 1922.

Later, as shipbuilding became more efficient, RMS Queen Elizabeth, Mauretania, Bremen, Nieuw Amsterdam, and America further reduced the number of funnels down to two.

The Aquitania, now the last four-funnel liner afloat, served in the Second World War and thereafter enjoyed a quiet postwar career, until finally she was scrapped in 1950.

However, in the late 1910s, William Francis Gibbs began to draft designs for new 1,000-foot liners that could reach a speed of 30 knots.

The exact intended design of Oceanic III is unknown, although company concept renderings show it to be a three-funnelled 1,000-foot (300 m) liner.

However, early plans from Harland and Wolff's archives show a design from 1927 for a four-funnelled liner almost identical to the Olympic-class, except with a more-modern cruiser stern.