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IMM’s shipbuilders and secured most of the repair work for IMM’s great fleet: repairs were reckoned to be more profitable than building, and kept the yards busy when new orders were scarce. An American associate wrote of Pirrie: “Born to command, he had larger ideas than others and a greater insight into men.” The American likened him to the railway man Jay Gould, the oilman Rockefeller, the steel man Carnegie: “like these Pirrie stands out conspicuously—giants all of them among dwarfs.” He seemed “easily the biggest man in Ireland.” 6
    P irrie cultivated close relations between Harland & Wolff and many shipping lines, but none was bound more tightly to the Belfast yards than White Star. In 1867 a Liverpool shipowner called Thomas Ismay bought for £1,000 an insolvent shipping firm specializing in transporting emigrants to the Australian goldfields. A bantering conversation during a billiard game two years later determined Ismay to divert White Star ships from their Australian routes, which never paid well, to the North Atlantic. It was a good moment to change tactics. The expansion of the United States since the end of the Civil War was attracting thousands of European immigrants who needed berths on transatlantic steamships. From the outset, in 1869, Harland & Wolff arranged the finance for Ismay’s expanded building program on condition that their Belfast yard got the orders.
    The first Harland & Wolff ship for White Star, the Oceanic, was launched at Belfast in 1870 and set new standards for size and comfort. At 3,078 tons it was the largest ship on the ocean: capable of fourteen knots it crossed the Atlantic in eight to ten days carrying up to 200 cabin and 1,000 steerage passengers, with 130 crew. First-class cabins were larger than was customary and boasted electric bells for stewards and baths with running water. The most conspicuous novelty in the Oceanic arose from the decision to abandon the Royal Navy’s quarterdeck tradition: passengers’ quarters had been near the stern, where the ship heaved in most weathers. In steamships, the juddering from the propeller was constant in the stern, while in rough conditions the propeller lashed through the air rather than the sea causing a nasty “racing” effect. Harland & Wolff shifted the first-class cabins amidships, where there was reduced heaving and racing, as well as less pungent galley smells. Cheaper steerage berths remained in the stern. “The change to midships was so universally appreciated that the White Star Line at once leaped to a foremost place in Atlantic enterprise,” recorded the Liverpool Daily Post in 1899. Competitors had to match White Star standards of comfort: “Mr Ismay was, in truth, the inventor of luxurious ocean travel.” 7
    After the Oceanic, Harland built the Adriatic , Britannic , Germanic , Arabic , Coptic , Ionic, and Doric for White Star. In all there was an emphasis on the convenience of passengers. The intention was to make Atlantic crossings potentially enjoyable rather than certainly dreadful. In 1887 the keels were laid in Harland & Wolff’s shipyard of two important new White Star liners, the Teutonic and the Majestic . These were the first vessels built for White Star that relied solely on steam power and dispensed with square-rigged sails as backup. They had another innovation, twin propellers, which meant that they could achieve a speed of twenty knots. Their displacement was just under ten thousand tons. Until the Teutonic and Majestic, White Star liner accommodation had been divided between cabin class and steerage, but these new ships inaugurated the era of three classes. They had accommodation for 300 first-class passengers, 190 second-class, and 1,000 third-class. The Teutonic took the Blue Riband for a westward Atlantic crossing in five days, sixteen hours, and thirty-one minutes in 1891. This was the last time that a White Star liner held the Blue Riband, for their ships were built to be