This from Leon Freilich.

Ti

ta

nic

It was on this day in 1912 that the R.M.S. Titanic departed Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. It was supposed to arrive in New York City on April 15th.

It was the biggest passenger ship ever built at the time at 882 feet long and 92 feet wide. Its hull had a capacity of more than four and a half million cubic feet. The Titanic is generally remembered as a luxury liner, but only 325 of the 2,224 people on board were traveling in first class. Many of the passengers were European immigrants hoping to start new lives in America.

On the fifth night of the ship’s voyage, the weather was clear and windless. There was no moon. It had been an especially warm winter and many icebergs had broken off from glaciers farther north, so the lookout men had been told to keep an eye out for them. At about 11:40, one of the lookouts, Frederick Fleet, saw a huge dark object floating in the water in front of the ship. He yelled, “Iceberg right ahead,” and rang an alarm bell. Many of the passengers awake that night later said that they felt a slight bump.

The sinking of the Titanic was one of the worst maritime disasters in history, and it has been a great inspiration to artists of all kinds. More than 500 songs were written about the disaster, most famously “It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down” by Pop Stoneman, with the lines, “Oh they threw the lifeboats out o’er the dark and stormy sea / The band struck up with ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ / Children wept and cried as the water rushed through the side / It was sad when that great ship went down.” The disaster has also been the subject of more than a hundred books and at least a dozen movies.