Why an oil-fired turbine Olympic class would trade economy for speed

What if the Olympic-class liners used oil-fired boilers and steam turbines instead of coal and reciprocating engines?

They would probably be faster, but early oil-and-turbine operation would be costly enough to put pressure on their economics.

The proposed machinery would probably increase speed but would not be economical for the period in which Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic were conceived. The panel notes that prestige and the market for a faster Atlantic passage might still encourage the experiment. Ocean-liner economics depended heavily on wealthy first-class passengers covering the voyage, with the lower classes adding profit, so a speed premium had some commercial logic. The moment shows how propulsion choices connect engineering performance to fuel markets, passenger demand, and corporate prestige.