The Nomadic Nomadic Image

The Titanic's Tender "Nomadic"

Here are just a few of the pictures of the Nomadic which I took on a recent trip to Paris. I'm still trying to find out some more details of the ship's history. Thanks to Martin in LA for telling me that Nomadic & Traffic (sister ship) were built at Harland & Wolff specifically for use as tenders for Olympic & Titanic at Cherbourg. Nomadic was launched on 25 April 1911, and was designed to carry 1,000 1st and 2nd class passengers. She had a gross tonnage of 1,273 and was/is 220.7 feet long. The Traffic and Nomadic served the Olympic at Cherbourg and the Titanic once.

In 1940 the Traffic was scuttled at Cherbourg, but the German Navy raised her. On 17th Jan 1941 she was sunk by a Royal Navy torpedo boat while in action under German flag in the English Channel.

For even more info about the Nomadic, click here.

The Nomadic remains, and, privately owned, is closed to the public today. She was until recently a high-class Japanese restaurant (note the new large glass room on her upper decks) until the chefs' visas expired and they had to go back to Japan. Today, she is unused and a caretaker "Patrice" lives on board keeping the ship in trim and pumping her out sometimes (she has a very very small leak). He is a very nice guy indeed, but speaks no English at all.

When I was there (last summer) the owner was trying to decide what to do with her (he had had offers to buy her, but had so far refused them). Some people wanted to make a hotel of her, but she really is too small for that, I think.

She is almost right next to the Eiffel Tower (you can see it in one of the pictures), on the other side of the river. She is in good condition inside, with a small conference room where the steam engines used to be (they are gone).

I might be wrong on this (I can't quite remember), but I think Patrice told me the ship was taken there in the mid-seventies. She had to be weighed down heavily to get under the bridges on the River Seine.

These tiny pictures of Nomadic can be expanded to high resolution (100K) by just clicking on them.

To return to this index after you have seen a high res picture, just click on your "back up one page" button.

Julian Hill,