RMS Olympic Ismay had previously planned to build a ship named "Olympic" as a sister ship to . The senior Ismay died in 1899 and the order for the ship was cancelled. Construction of "Olympic" began three months before "Titanic" to ease pressures on the shipyard. Several years would pass before "Britannic" would be launched. In order to accommodate the construction of the class, Harland and Wolff upgraded their facility in Belfast; the most dramatic change was the combining of three slipways into two larger ones. "Olympic" and "Titanic" were constructed side by side. "Olympic"s keel was laid on 16 December 1908
The ships Anne and Little James James" was a pinnace (small ship with sails or oars) of forty-four tons displacement, and for her voyage to America she had come new from the builder’s yard. Per Bradford: “a fine new vessel of about 44. tunne, which the Company had built to stay in the Countrie.” She was a small ship with about ¼ the tonnage of "Anne" and had a total crew of probably not more than fifteen men. Her captain was an Adventurer named Emmanuel Altham, a young man of age 23 of English landed gentry from Essexshire and a novice at the business of sailing.