When she joined White Star's fleet in September 1899, Oceanic outranked every other vessel afloat in size and was the first to exceed the length of Brunel's Great Eastern. The Harland & Wolff yard in Belfast designed her for comfort and luxury rather than outright speed, and she soon became one of the most popular ships between Liverpool – later Southampton – and New York. No ship surpassed her until 1901.
At the start of the First World War the Royal Navy took her over as the armed merchant cruiser HMS Oceanic and sent her to patrol the waters north of Scotland. Her naval career lasted only a few weeks: on 8 September 1914, after a navigational error, she ran onto a reef near Foula, one of the remote Shetland Islands, and could not be refloated. The wreck was broken up where she lay.
