BEFORE THE PUBLIC WORKS ADMINISTRATION. This week's "When Weather Changed History" is Titanic's encounter with an iceberg well south of the usual ice fields. The story includes a bit of the commercial rivalry between White Star and Cunard. White Star management decided that rather than match the speed of Mauretania and Lusitania, they would go for size and comfort. Thus Olympic and Titanic were bigger, if somewhat slower, and less prone to vibration. The Cunarders could make time, but passengers were aware of it.

Mauretania and Lusitania were in service before 1907, the year of a major financial panic that popped the interurban bubble. Olympic and Titanic were laid down that year. I have come across no evidence for White Star making these enormous investments in order to shore up public confidence, although I did turn up a Newsweek article crediting the House of Morgan with stopping the panic. Morgan had an interest in White Star: perhaps there is a connection.

Come the next panic, which pundits preferred to call a "depression" Cunard and White Star were one company, with excess capacity and the threat of tax-financed competition from Zeppelins, and the surviving rivals, Olympic and Mauretania, awaited scrapping together. The company did not choose to go quietly as the Queens (so named as to avoid names ending in -ia or -ic) were on order.