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Famous Ships That Did Not Sink: The 'SS President Grant'

As you already know, this last weekend marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Though yes, the sinking is a huge part of history, it's also not indicative of how ship travel actually was in the early 20th century. Not every ship sank. This week, we'll show you some notable ships that managed to stay afloat and still make their mark in history.

Today's ship that didn't sink: the SS President Grant of Admiral Oriental Line.

Have you picked up on a theme in our series so far? It's that, for all these notable ocean liners that didn't sink, they eventually ended up serving their time as troopships, mostly during World War I. Had the Titanic continued on, she probably would have gone the same route, possibly even eventually sinking from U-boat torpedoes.

Still we focus on one more ship that didn't sink, and this one isn't a veteran of the transatlantic route; the SS President Grant instead plied the waves between the US west coast and the Orient, specifically Japan and Hong Kong. As the Grant, the ship sailed for weeks with passengers bound for new lives, or just new adventures, on the other side of the world. As the USS Harris, which is what she became in 1940 with a conversion to a US troopship, she sailed with troops fighting World War II in the South Pacific, in North Africa, and even in the Aleutian Islands.