What does J.P. Morgan, the American financier, and the passenger ships, RMS Titanic and SS United States have in common?

Everyone knows that White Star Line, the owner of the RMS Titanic, was a British Company. Fewer are aware that White Star was owned by an American.  It was a wholly owned subsidiary of the International Mercantile Marine Company (IMM), an American holding company owned by J.P. Morgan.  J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, sold the company to J.P. Morgan in 1902.  The RMS Titanic, like all the other ships of the White Star fleet, was a British ship, and technically, as an American, J.P. Morgan could not own British ships.  Nevertheless, Morgan took advantage of the loophole that his holding company, IMM, could own the company that owned the ships. For all intents and purposes, J.P. Morgan owned the Titanic. It was not one of his better investments, for reasons having nothing to do with icebergs.

IMM was Morgan’s grand scheme to monopolize shipping in the North Atlantic. IMM acquired control over the American Line, Red Star Line, Atlantic Transport Line, White Star Line, Leyland Line and Dominion Line. The company also arranged profit-sharing relationships with the German Hamburg-Amerika and the North German Lloyd Lines. Ultimately, Morgan’s attempt to control the North Atlantic trade was a failure. IMM was over-levered and had inadequate cash flow to survive the volatility of international shipping.  Two years after the sinking of the Titanic in 1914, IMM defaulted on bond interest payments and was put in receivership.

Following a series of mergers, IMM ultimately would be reorganized as United States Lines. United States Lines would build the SS United States in 1952. She was the largest passenger ship ever built in the United States and still holds the record as the faster passenger ship on the North Atlantic.

The SS United States never hit an iceberg but instead was put out of service by an airplane. In 1958, six years after the SS United States went into service, the first Boeing 707 took to the skies. The four-engine airplane with a range of 3,700 miles would end the reign of the passenger liner as the primary means of transportation across the oceans of the world.

The SS United States Conservancy is now attempting to save what is left of the SS United States, not as a ship but as a “self-sustaining, multi-purpose stationary waterfront attraction.”