Launched in 1899 with a tonnage of 17,300 gross, she was intended to take the Blue Riband from the German fleet. However, on her maiden voyage, it became apparent that her designers had overestimated what she was capable of, and she could only manage 19.5 knots.

Although she was a failure as far as speed was concerned, she was still the largest ship in the world with two sets of 4 cylinder triple expansion engines burning 480 tons of coal a day to produce 28 000 horse power. At over 700 feet long she must have been an impressive sight as she lay at the dockside in Liverpool ready to leave on her maiden voyage. the following extract from the Liverpool Daily Post is worth including as it gives a graphic description of just how immense and luxurious these great liners were at the turn of the century.

"Big as she is, the Oceanic appeared nothing remarkable yesterday as she lay at the Canada Dock while coal was being poured into her bunkers from eight grimy barges lying alongside. This was because the Liverpool Docks themselves are gigantic. It was only when, from the bridge of the Oceanic, 66 feet above the water line, one looked down upon the whole length of the vessel and upon the expanse of docks and sheds that her size was realised. On the opposite side of the dock was the Cymric, from the depths of which a horde of labourers were discharging cargo.

Now the Cymric is the largest cargo steamer in the world, 2 500 tons larger than wither the Majestic or the Teutonic, but from the Oceanic's bridge she looked positively like a coaster. One looked down upon her busy decks as one might look from the roof of a house into the street. Why the bulk of the Oceanic is not the first thing that strikes the attention is because her looks are so graceful. She is huge, but she is not elephantine. Her masts, even at the point where they enter the topmast or spar-deck, are nearly 3 feet in diameter, that is, they are as thick and as high as patriarchal oak, but from a distance they look slim and tapering. The same may be said of the ship's boats, which are as big as barges.

The fact is that everything about this latest creation of shipping enterprise is proportioned so beautifully that the mere hugeness of it all is only apprehended by remembering such facts as that her rudder and stern-frame weigh 150 tons, that 100 tons of cable lie coiled on her forecastle deck, that she is composed of 17 000 steel plates, many weighing from two to three and a quarter tons, that her promenade deck is 400 feet long and that her monster engines can move a power of 28 000 horses. To look down into the engine room from the big skylight on the top deck is to have a glimpse into a world that, to people not used to shipping, is one of strange activity, a world where diminutive human ants are moving in a tropical atmosphere across narrow bridges, busy preparing this Brobdignagian apparatus for its first struggle with the forces of the wide Atlantic, which the Oceanic is to cross with the speed and certainty of an express train, the conquest of the mighty force of matter by the mighty force of mind.

Much has been written already of the ship as a triumph of science, the more immediate purpose here is to speak of her as a triumph of art, as the last thing, so far, in the way of floating hotels... Staterooms in scores to left and right, now mahogany, now oak, now satinwood, now a mixture of any two or three of them, until the lavishness of everything becomes surfeiting notwithstanding that the Louis Quinze style succeeded the Queen Anne, and the Queen Anne gave way to something too utter in decadent sumptuousness. Three decks of these apartments with lavatories of costly marble, suites of baths and every other appurtenance of physical comfort placed conveniently here and there. It is the literal thing to say that the Oceanic is a Hotel Cecil afloat!"

To travel in the "Hotel Cecil" cost passengers £100 to £150 for a single passage.

Only a week after the maiden voyage Ismay, owner of the White Star Line suffered a series of heart attacks, and died on 23 November 1899. There are several monuments to his memory in St. Nicholas church yard in Liverpool. He was also remembered by having the London & North Western Railway locomotive No 1921 named after him "T H ISMAY"

In fact, many of the LNWR locomotives were named after White Star ships, among them Baltic, Germanic, Britannic, Teutonic and of course, Oceanic.

On 8 September 1914, working as a troop ship during the Great War, Oceanic ran aground under the cliffs of Foula in the Shetland Isles and broke up.

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