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
Skuldelev ships Skuldelev ships provide a good source of information about the shipbuilding traditions of the late Viking Age and are now exhibited at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. The museum has built accurate reconstructions of all five of the original Skuldelev ships; some of them have also been reconstructed by other groups across the world. Skuldelev 1 was a sturdy seagoing cargo-vessel, possibly of the knarr type. It is 16 m long and 4.8 m wide and would have had a draught of 1 m with its crew of 6 to 8. The ship was constructed in Sognefjorden in western