In order to make the crossings more pleasant aboard these austere wooden sailboats, musician groups were hired to allow the passengers to dance to popular tunes.

[18][21] On 18 January 1868, Thomas Ismay, a director of the National Line, purchased the house flag, trade name and goodwill of the bankrupt company for £1,000 (approximately equivalent to £124,400 in 2023),[20][22][23] with the intention of operating large steamships on the North Atlantic service between Liverpool and New York.

The line also adopted a buff-coloured funnel with a black top as a distinguishing feature for their ships, as well as a distinctive house flag, a red broad pennant with a swallowtail bearing a white five-pointed star.

Adriatic, after barely a month in service, became the first White Star ship to capture the Blue Riband, having completed a record westbound crossing in 7 days, 23 hours and 17 minutes at an average speed of 14.53 knots (26.91 km/h; 16.72 mph).

[33] In January 1873, Baltic became the first of the line to capture the Blue Riband for an eastbound crossing, having completed a return trip to Liverpool in 7 days, 20 hours and 9 minutes at an average speed of 15.09 knots (27.95 km/h; 17.37 mph).

[61] In an effort to outdo their competitors, White Star began making plans to put two new liners into service which would prove to be exceptionally innovative in design for the time, Teutonic and Majestic.

Additionally, owing to the arrangement with the British Government,[63] Teutonic and Majestic were the first White Star liners to be built with twin screws, powered by triple expansion engines capable of driving the ships at speeds of up to 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph).

Prior to the completion of the two new ships, Baltic and Republic were both sold to the Holland America Line and respectively renamed Veendam and Maasdam, after which they were put into service on the company's main trans-Atlantic route between Rotterdam and New York.

[72] In 1893, by which time Teutonic and Majestic had established themselves on the North Atlantic run, White Star sold Celtic to the Danish Thingvalla Line, who renamed her Amerika and attempted to use her for their own emigrant service from Copenhagen to New York.

Like Teutonic and Majestic, Cymric was fitted with twin screws, but was instead powered by quadruple expansion engines capable of achieving a modest speed of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) commonly seen in cargo and livestock carriers of that time.

Britannic and Germanic were equally outdated, and with advancements in shipbuilding during the 1890s, Teutonic and Majestic had been eclipsed by several newer vessels, most recently by Norddeutscher Lloyd's Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.

In response, Ismay and his partners at Harland & Wolff set out to design two new liners for the North Atlantic run which would, in a fashion similar to how Teutonic and Majestic had done, go down in shipbuilding history.

Like Teutonic and Majestic, Oceanic was designed with capabilities to be converted to an armed merchant cruiser in time of war if needed, specifications for which caused her to be built with a double-plated hull and turrets on her upper decks which could be quickly mounted with guns.

At the same time Oceanic had departed from Liverpool, a fireman's strike had been ensuing at the docks, which in turn meant she sailed with a boiler room crew consisting of fewer men than her specifications called for.

Due to Cymric initially being designed as a livestock carrier, she was built with smaller engines capable of modest speeds which both consumed less coal and occupied less space within the hull.

[89]: 13–15 While the first three members of the highly regarded quartet of liners were built and put into service with little problem, the fourth and final ship, Adriatic, experienced a considerable delay in her construction.

Unlike her sisters however, she was unable to attain the title of world's largest ship at the time of her completion, as her 24,451 gross register tonnage was just barely outmatched by Hamburg Amerika's Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, which measured 24,581 tons and entered service four months prior to the launch of Adriatic.

These four ships were greatly similar in appearance to the Cymric and Arabic, all with a single funnel with two or four masts, with engines geared to twin screws capable of service speeds between 14 and 16 knots (26 and 30 km/h; 16 and 18 mph).

Due to its proximity to London, Southampton had a clear advantage over Liverpool in reducing travelling time, while by creating a terminal at Cherbourg White Star had established a route which allowed passengers to embark or disembark at either a British or Continental port.

[100] Celtic embarked on two experimental crossings from Southampton to New York via Cherbourg and Queenstown, first on 20 April and then again on 18 May, which proved successful and set the way for the establishment of the route, which was to be maintained by Teutonic, Majestic, Oceanic and the newly completed Adriatic.

On 20 September 1911, Olympic was damaged following a collision with the cruiser HMS Hawke, which led to her return to the shipyard for lengthy repairs and the postponement of the entry into service of Titanic.

[113] November 1916 would see the loss of Britannic, the third and final Olympic-class vessel, which sank near the Greek island of Kea after striking a naval mine while in service as a hospital ship.

The latter had become a major source of revenue for shipping lines already on the route after the advent of effective mechanical refrigeration systems in the late 1880s, allowing large quantities of cattle carcasses to be preserved on the long voyage back to the British Isles.

[161]: 78–89  In keeping with White Star's new philosophy on the Atlantic of size over speed, the Jubilee class were to be the largest ships ever put on the Australia run, at 550 ft (170 m) in length and nearly 12,000 gross register tons.

[162] With a service speed of 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph), the Jubilee class were significantly slower than the smaller mailships run by the Orient Line and P&O and their size meant they could not transit the Suez Canal, so they would have to take the long route via South Africa and would not attract first-class passengers.

In the earliest days of the route the initial three ships were heavily used to transport men, soldiers and supplies to South Africa during the Boer War, while Suevic ran aground off Lizard Point, Cornwall in 1907.

In 1883 an agreement was made between White Star and the Shaw, Savill & Albion Line (newly formed by merger the previous year) to operate a joint service between London and Wellington.

Although slightly smaller in length and tonnage, they closely resembled the two modified Jubilee-class liners built for the Australia Run, with bridges mounted far forward to allow for a generous passenger-carrying space.

The White Star Line's main offices, Albion House, still exist in Liverpool, standing in James Street within sight of the more grandiose headquarters of their rivals, the Cunard Building.

[169] The French passenger tender Nomadic, the last surviving vessel of the White Star Line, was purchased by the Northern Ireland Department for Social Development in January 2006.