The Virginia Newspaper Project examines the news covering the sinking of R.M.S. Titanic, April 14, 1912.
From the advent of newsprint in the United States there have been events that have been catapulted into the headlines of every American newspaper: the Civil War, various international entanglements, Presidential elections. Virginia's newspaper readers have always been on the forefront of this news coverage. Current papers like, the Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk), the Times Dispatch (Richmond), the Daily Progress (Charlottesville), and the Daily News-Leader (Staunton) all trace their origins well back into the 1800's. Therefore it should come as no surprise that Virginia newspapers more than aptly covered one of the first truly international news stories; the sinking of the Titanic. Virginia's papers often surpassed the coverage of such foreign papers as, Le Figaro, and the, London Times.
What made the Titanic sinking so newsworthy was not simply the 1500+ death toll. After all, Mt. Pelee had erupted ten years before, at a loss of over 40,000 lives and, while it was widely reported, it never achieved the same impact on the world's psyche. Rather, the Titanic became a legendary story for other reasons.
The sinking of the Titanic tells a primal tale of man challenging nature and losing. She was supposedly unsinkable, yet went down on her maiden voyage."The story has retained a remarkable power...Some disasters are undeniably acts of God, but the Titanic sinking has always seemed ambiguous. Although caused by an iceberg, it was also man-made, the result of the state of mind--grandiose, avaricious, and self-confident of the British and American magnates and engineers who conceived and built the ship."
On top of this she had a passenger list that included some of the world's richest and most influential people (unlike Krakatoa, a remote French colony, whose anonymous inhabitants made no claim to living on an island invulnerable to volcanic eruption) Finally, the wide-spread use of the telegraph and photographs, enabled the Titanic tragedy to be quickly and widely (although not always accurately) reported. All of these factors added up to, perhaps, the most poignant and widely reported disaster (outside of an act of war) of modern times.
John Thayer, a survivor of the Titanic, would later write of the sinking as: "The event which not only made the world rub its eyes and awake, but woke it with a start...To my mind the world of today awoke April 15, 1912." Osbert Sitwell went so far as to describe the event as, "a symbol of the approaching fate of Western Civilization".
Take a voyage through the newspapers of Virginia (and other states and countries), follow the links and text and journey back to mid-April of 1912, and the maiden voyage of the largest, most luxurious, and "unsinkable" ship ever built; the R.M.S. Titanic.
The Titanic was owned by the White Star Line and built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast, Ireland. She was launched on 31 May 1911, concluded her short trials by 2 April 1912 and arrived in Southampton at midnight 3 April. She was the largest ship in the world, being 46,328 gross tons, and she was also one of the fastest. The Titanic was 882.5 feet long, 92.5 feet beam (wide), and was 60.5 feet from the waterline to the boat deck.
"She was licensed to carry 2603 passengers and a crew of 944--3547 in all. On her voyage, she had some 2200 persons aboard, but there was lifeboat accommodation for no more than 1178....In all her life-saving effects the Titanic, in fact, exceeded the official requirements of the Board of Trade at the time."
Her maiden voyage was an auspicious occasion to say the least. This is reflected in her passenger list, which included the likes of Col. John Jacob Astor, Bruce Ismay, Isidor Strauss, Maj. Archibald Butt, Thomas Andrews, and many other of the rich and famous set of the Western world. The voyage, at its outset, was uneventful. After leaving Southampton, England there was a brief stop in Cherbourg, France, a pause off Queenstown Ireland, and then out into the open Ocean, with the unstated intent to break the world's record for crossing the Atlantic. Within days, however, the name Titanic would not go down as one of the fastest, and the most luxurious ship afloat, but it would simply go down. A victim of nature's dominion over man.
In the early morning of April 15, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg. Modern analysis now tells us it was a glancing blow that buckled her plates (not tearing a gash in her side). Two days shy of her ultimate port-of-call, New York, the Titanic met her fate and sank off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Map of the disasterHeadline from the, Times-Dispatch, (Richmond, Va.)
Most people know the basic outline of the tragedy: That the Californian, only miles away, ignored the distress rockets and messages of the stricken liner. That the Carpathia steamed to the rescue, arriving in time to rescue the relative handful of stunned survivors. That a board of inquiry was immediately formed that would damn White Star Line and its Director, J. Bruce Ismay (who survived the sinking) for pushing the Titanic through a northern route, at high speeds, with inadequate lookouts. But most people have not examined the first-hand source for all this news. They have not seen how the people of Virginia, the United States, and the world learned of the disaster--through the words and images of the press--through NEWSPAPERS. We now invite you to do so.