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| SS Canopic |
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| Breakfast Menu |
Type: Passenger liner
Tonnage: 12,268 GRT
7,717 NRT
Length: 578 ft 3 in (176.25 m)
Beam: 59 ft 3 in (18.06 m)
Depth: 35 ft 10 in (10.92 m)
Masts: 2
Propellers: 2
Engines: 6-cylinder triple expansion steam engine
Boilers: 6
Speed: 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph)
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| Promenade Deck State Room |
Capacity:
- 1,300 passengers:
- 250 × 1st class
- 250 × 2nd class
- 800 × 3rd class
The Canopic was originally built in 1990 as the Commonwealth for the Dominion Line.
- This 12,268 GRT ship was 578 feet (176 m) long, and powered by a 988 nhp 6-cylinder triple expansion steam engine which gave her a service speed of 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph). She could carry up to 1,300 passengers.
- In 1903 the Commonwealth was sold to the White Star Line and renamed Canopic.
- The Canopic made her first White Star Line voyage on January 14, 1903 on the Liverpool to Boston service.
In 1904 Canopic was transferred to the New York to Mediterranean service.
From 1917 to 1919 Canopic operated under the Liner Requesition Scheme.
In February 1919, Canopic reverted back to White Star Line, and in July went to the New York to Mediterranean berth.
In 1922 Canopic replaced the Arabic on the Mediterranean route.
On April 13, 1922 she made her first voyage on the Liverpool to Halifax to Boston route, then to the Montreal run for the summer.
On November 10, 1922 Canopic started on the Bremen to New York service.
In November 1923 she took over the Hamburg to New York route.
In September 1924 she was put on the Liverpool - Philadelphia - Portland, Maine to end her career
In October 1924, Canopic was sold for breaking up and scrapped at Briton Ferry, South Wales.
- In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, millions of people emigrated from Europe to the United States and Canada. White Star was among the first shipping lines to have passenger ships with inexpensive accommodation for third-class passengers, in addition to places for higher paying first- and second-class.
- White Star advertised extensively for emigrant passengers. When the Line began operations in 1870, the majority of their business in the emigration trade was centred on Great Britain, and Irish emigrants remained a chief source of income for much of the company's history.
- From the start, a great deal of their business also came from Scandinavia, with Norway and Sweden being the largest areas of success. As the years passed, the company expanded its services into continental Europe, eventually tapping into the massive streams of emigrants from Italy, from the Slavic regions of Central Europe under the control of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and nations such as Romania and Bulgaria in southeastern Europe struggling with slowed economic growth and overpopulation. Also included was Europe's massive population of Ashkenazi Jews from several areas of Eastern Europe generally known as the Pale of Settlement (a region within the Russian Empire designated under anti-Semitic governmental policies as the only area in which Jews were allowed to settle permanently, and which included primarily areas of far western Russia, the modern-day countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus, and the remnants of the former kingdom of Galicia, an historic ethnic region with a huge Jewish population, now divided between southeastern Poland and the western Ukraine).
- The Line eventually expanded their services of travel across all regions of Europe, spanning from the Iberian Peninsula to the Middle East. No exact figures are available, but White Star liners may have carried as many as two million emigrants to North America. They maintained a handful of shipping routes for passengers, including these most widely used ones:
- Liverpool to New York, calling at Queenstown, Ireland
- Liverpool to Boston, calling at Queenstown, Ireland
- Genoa to New York, calling at Naples, Palermo, and Gibraltar, beginning in 1904
- Southampton to New York, calling at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, beginning in 1907.
- Liverpool to Montreal, calling at Queenstown, Ireland, beginning in 1909.
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| SS Canopic lands in Boston, Oct 17, 1920 |
In 1933 White Star and Cunard were both in serious financial difficulties because of the Great Depression, falling passenger numbers and the advanced age of their fleets. Work was halted on Cunard's new giant, Hull 534 (later the Queen Mary) in 1931 to save money. In 1933 the British government agreed to provide assistance to the two competitors on the condition that they merge their North Atlantic operations. The agreement was completed on 30 December 1933.
The merger took place on 10 May 1934, creating Cunard-White Star Limited.
The White Star Line's Head Office building still exists in Liverpool, standing on 30 James Street. The building on James Street, which had been unused for the past 10 years, has recently reopened as 30 James Street - Home of Titanic Hotel providing accommodation for 310 guests on 11 floors.
Cunard Line itself has, since 1995, introduced White Star Service as the brand of services on their ships RMS Queen Mary 2, MS Queen Victoria and the MS Queen Elizabeth. The company has also created the White Star Academy, an in-house programme for preparing new crew members for Cunard ships.
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