Rather than attempting to fully regain prestige by spending the additional money necessary to order liners that were fast enough to win back the Blue Riband from Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse or large enough to rival Oceanic in size, Cunard tried to maximize their profitability in order to remain solvent enough to fend off any takeover attempts. The three new ships were not especially fast, but all were larger than Campania and Lucania; in fact, Saxonia at was the largest Cunard liner up to that time – beating out Ivernia, which entered service a month before Saxonia, for that distinction – and the largest until Cunard placed RMS Caronia in service in 1905.Hyde, Francis E., Cunard and the North Atlantic, 1840–1973, pp. 327–331. Thus, although the decision to order and launch Saxonia in 1898–1899 was taken well before J. P. Morgan’s efforts of 1900–1902, to put together the large combination of shipping lines that was officially designated IMM in October 1902, Saxonia, her sister Ivernia, and her "half-sister" Carpathia became both instruments and models through which Cunard was able to successfully compete with its larger rivals – most notably IMM’s lead company, White Star.J. H. Isherwood, "Intermediate Ship 'Saxonia' ", Sea Breezes 13 (1952), p. 411.
