I was discussing family history with my brother and sister in our online chat, specifically our maternal grandfather’s wartime service. Seeking to clarify a point, I looked up his records and realized that today is the 110th anniversary of the day he arrived in England, after almost nine months of training in Canada.

Like many, if not all the Canadian troops arriving in England at that time, he came in style, traveling in a luxury liner, the RMS Olympic. Mind you the Olympic as a troop carrier was not the ship it had been, as the photo with the camouflage paint job shows.

It would return to being a tourist ship after the war for another 20 years or so before being sold for scrap. It was a twin to the RMS Titanic, a ship you may have heard about, and the Britannic, which you probably haven’t as it was sunk during the First World War. (For more information on those ships see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic)

Given today’s anniversary, I thought it worth a mention. I also note that sometimes historical records can be misleading. The military lists the ship as the S.S. Olympic. The “SS” designation stands for “steamship,” a prefix introduced when most vessels were sail powered.

While it was a steamship, at the time the Olympic was actually designated as the HMT (Hired Military Transport) Olympic. I hadn’t known that before wondering why the record read SS instead of RMS (Royal Mail Ship).

So much for today’s (family) history lesson.