u/CutWonderful8430

These are all photos of the Olympic, but something I can never stop admiring about the Olympic, Titanic, and even the Britannic (even though it was never completed as an ocean liner), is how clean and spacious they seem.

The exterior is extremely clean, and even in areas with a lot of machinery, it doesn't feel like you're suffocating because of how spacious the exteriors are.

Then come the interiors, and my God, even today the interiors of the Olympic class seem extremely spacious and comfortable!

The rooms are large and beautifully decorated, and even though it's the palatial style fashionable for its time, the colors are very well thought out.

Despite all the richly carved panels, since most are white or the color of the wood, with gold details, it doesn't seem like there are so many details vying for your attention, which makes everything much more pleasant to look at, and this helps to highlight other things, like the stained glass, the furniture, or the beautiful flooring.

Looking at their interiors, or even entering a digital simulation to feel what it would really be like to be inside, continues to bring a very unique sense of comfort and space; you feel like you can breathe and spend hours just walking through these comfortable spaces.

(I got the photos from here, here, and here.)

This idea came to mind because of the nature of these ships.

Often, when people think of "steampunk," they think of the Victorian era, the 19th century, steam engines, but mainly flying steam engines, like airships. But what about real ships? Ocean liners existed in the Victorian era, and they were steam engines, although their greatest refinement only occurred in the first half of the 20th century.

After the First World War, ocean liners switched from solid to liquid fuel, which perhaps made people see them as dieselpunk machines, but here's the trick: isn't steampunk about steam? Steam engines? I know there's a whole political aspect involved, but isn't the main thing that differentiates this genre from others si-fi the steam technology? If so, even with the change in style and fuel type, an ocean liner is still a steam engine, a steamship!

Steam remained the power force that propelled these ships to speeds of 25, 28, 30, 35, 38, 40 knots! It wasn't exactly diesel; there were already ocean liners with internal combustion engines in the 1930s, but they were extremely slow. It was steam that truly gave life and power to these ships. So, were ocean liners, especially those giants of the 1930s, truly "dieselpunk"? Or were they still steampunk, since steam remained the power force?

It's amazing how spacious and comfortable the Olympic and her sisters were, isn't it?

Would an ocean liner be steampunk or not?