RMS Homeric
1913 passenger liner
RMS Homeric, originally launched as Columbus, was an ocean liner built for Norddeutscher Lloyd and launched in 1913 at the F. Schichau yard in Danzig, Germany (now Gdańsk, Poland). Columbus was ceded to Great Britain in 1919 as part of German war reparations. She was sold to the White Star Line in 1920, which named her Homeric. Her sister ship Hindenburg remained in German ownership and was renamed Columbus. Homeric was operated by White Star from 1922 to 1935.
History
The White Star Line originally planned for its three Olympic-class liners, Olympic, Titanic and Britannic, to operate a weekly transatlantic express service. However, Titanic was lost on her maiden voyage after striking an iceberg in 1912, and Britannic was lost in the First World War after striking a naval mine in the Aegean in 1916. Another of the line’s express ships, the 17,000-ton Oceanic of 1899, was also lost during war service in 1914. When Olympic re-entered civilian service in 1920, she lacked any suitable running mates. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles which entitled Britain to war reparations, White Star looked to obtain some large German liners which had been under construction during the war but were left unfinished.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “RMS Homeric” as 1913 passenger liner. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1913 passenger liner. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1759488. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1919, 1920 and 1922.
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This entry incorporates text from “RMS Homeric” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.