COBI R.M.S. Olympic Set 1687

COBI's R.M.S. Olympic is a 1:700 model built from 595 blocks, 38.5 cm long, supplied with a display base and an engraved plaque carrying the ship's name and scale.

The propellers turn, and every marking is printed onto the blocks — this set contains no stickers.

The sister that came home

Olympic was the first of the three Olympic-class liners and the only one to have an ordinary career. She entered service in June 1911, ten months before Titanic, and for that time she was the largest ship in the world.

Her luck was mixed and then remarkable. Three months in, the cruiser HMS Hawke rammed her off Southampton and the Royal Navy won the resulting court case. After Titanic sank, her crew refused to sail until the lifeboats were replaced — fifty-four men were arrested for mutiny, and White Star rebuilt her with a double hull and boats for everyone aboard. She spent the war as a dazzle-painted troopship, and on 12 May 1918 she rammed and sank the submarine U-103, the only merchant vessel of the war to destroy an enemy warship. She worked the Atlantic until 1935, twenty-four years in service, and her crews called her Old Reliable.

There is a reason she matters beyond her own record. When she was broken up, her interiors were sold at auction rather than scrapped, and much of the first-class lounge panelling was installed in a hotel in Alnwick, Northumberland, where it remains. Titanic's fittings are at the bottom of the Atlantic. Olympic's are the closest anyone can get to walking through them.

In the COBI range

At 1:700 this model completes the set with COBI's Titanic (1680) and Britannic (1681) at the same scale, so the three sisters stand correctly side by side. They will not match COBI's 1:300 warships.

Specifications

Pieces: 595 · Scale: 1:700 · Age: 8+
Model dimensions: 38.5 × 4 × 9.5 cm (15.2 × 1.6 × 3.7 in), 12 cm high on the base