Talk:SS Ivernia

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Requested move 30 September 2024

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SS Ivernia → RMS Ivernia (1899)
RMS Ivernia → RMS Ivernia (1955)

– I've been performing significant research on Ivernia at the Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums, and with other primary sources including ship's passenger lists and correspondence. These all indicate the ship was in fact issued a Royal Mail contract like its sisters, Saxonia and Carpathia . As such, like its sister, the article should be named RMS Ivernia (1899) in line with its sister, using its launch date for disambiguation. This probably means that RMS Ivernia should be also disambiguated to RMS Ivernia (1955). An example of evidence of this prefix that is publicly accessible can be found here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/magbell.04100128/?sp=1&st=image Where Alexander Graham Bell is writing to his wife using official Cunard Letterhead on the Ivernia, stating the RMS prefix, which would have been a highly controversial thing to do less than six months after its maiden voyage if it had not in fact been given contract for the prefix. Other examples include the ship's crew writing RMS on passenger lists, articles in contemporary engineering journals using the RMS prefix, and more, although many of these are not in the public domain. Conversely, all evidence the ship was named SS Ivernia come from secondary sources, possibly influenced in part by the wikipedia title, with hobbyist indexes of ships, wreck sites, and other such content. Tobin Dax (talk) 10:20, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

SS was the standard abbreviation for all steam powered ships. As such it is perfectly correct. If there is evidence that the ship was classified as a Royal Mail Ship we can use RMS, though it is not required. Either prefix would be acceptable and correct. I have no strong opinion on the matter, but unless there is ample evidence in reliable sources that the RMS prefix was more commonly used, I'd just play it safe and stick with SS which we know is accurate. If it aint broke, don't fix it. -Ad Orientem (talk) 18:28, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, and yes fortunately there is ample evidence that RMS was more commonly used, certainly equivalent to the evidence supporting the use of RMS for RMS Saxonia (1899), which makes sense for nearly identical ships serving identical routes on identical contracts.

For reliability, Library of Congress (Cunard Ivernia Letter head), UK National Archives (30+ Passenger lists), Lloyd's Register (memos relating to a repair), pretty heavyweight sources. Contemporary postcards that use RMS and contemporary hand-colourised postcards depicting the Blue Ensign indicate RMS also.

SS is also accurate for any other Royal Mail Ship (RMS Titanic, RMS Olympic, RMS Mauretania, RMS Lusitania, RMS Lucania, etc.) but there seems to be a preference on Wikipedia to use RMS where the evidence I describe above exists that the ship was entitled to and used the prefix, so under these circumstances I'd argue either they're all broke except Ivernia, or Ivernia is, as per Wikipedia:TITLECON. Tobin Dax (talk) 09:26, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

.