1912
RMS Titanic hits an iceberg
Shortly before midnight on April 14, 1912 the White Star liner Titanic struck one of a number of icebergs in a pack south of Newfoundland and sank within hours. Over 1500 passengers and crew died, with only 710 survivors.
There have been many naval disasters that have taken more lives than the sinking of the Titanic. In 1865 the boilers of the steamboat Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River and killed over 1,800 people; the ferry Dona Paz collided with an oil tanker on its way to Manila and sank, with 4,300 people lost. 9,300 refugees and troops being evacuated on the German liner Wilhelm Gustlof were killed when the ship was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in 1945. There have been more poignant and tragic sinkings — the loss of the “White Ship” in 1120 led to a 20-year civil war in England; thousands of prisoners of war were killed by their own countrymen in World War II when ships transporting them were sunk by aircraft or subs unable to discern the human cargo.
But no other maritime catastrophe has entered into the public imagination as the doomed RMS Titanic bound for New York from Southampton. The subject of countless books, movies and popular songs, the sinking of the ship labelled “unsinkable” is the stuff of legends. There are a number of reasons for this: the hubris of the name and its boasts; the fact that this was the maiden voyage of the largest vessel afloat; the easily-avoided nature of its collision; and the loss of prominent society members all contributed to the fascination.
