The ship was the largest afloat and the most glorious. Her name: Titanic.
While the fate of the luxury liner in April 1912 is now a well-known tragedy, immortalized in those reading about the disaster in real time were horrified at the breaking news.
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The Titanic had always easily earned headlines. When the ship launched its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, much attention was given to her sumptuous appointments, and they were gleefully noted by news reports.
"She is literally a floating hotel, provided with dancing rooms, smoking rooms, cafes, library and even a garden of Oriental palms and beds of roses and carnations," "A swimming tank and a skating rink are among her other features."
The Titanic was sailing from England to the United States, carrying some of the world's richest people, including real estate mogul John Jacob Astor, whose net worth was about $3 billion to $5 billion in 2025 dollars.
One of the first people to get an inkling that something was wrong with the Titanic's cruise was a radio operator in Duluth by the name of Mrs. Redfern, who later reported
The earliest news about the Titanic disaster was seen as obviously noteworthy 鈥� was the front-page headline of the April 15, 1912, Brainerd Dispatch. reported the Duluth News Tribune. But while a big event, it wasn't at first seen as a human tragedy: crowed a secondary headline in the Grand Forks Herald that same day.
By the next day, the scope of the tragedy was starting to come into focus. The number of those who had likely perished varied. Some papers reported 1,400, others said 1,500 or 1,800. Regardless, the death toll made the Titanic sinking
The Daily Post and Record in Rochester devoted its to Titanic news.
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While victims of the Titanic made their way home after getting picked up by other ships, attention back home swung to figuring out who was alive and who was dead.
The notables were, of course, best known. Businessman Herbert F. Chaffee and his wife, Carrie, together one of the richest families in North Dakota, although it was reported early that
William B. Silvey, well-to-do proprietor of the Superior Hotel in Superior, Wisconsin, and his wife, Alice, were also
The nation as the steamship Carpathia, carrying most of those who had survived the Titanic, steamed from the sinking site to New York harbor, at times as it fought through perilous fog.
The Duluth News Tribune encapsulated the feeling of the moment by printing a front-page illustration: cast upon the Atlantic Ocean in memory of those lost.
"All hope that any passengers or members of the crew of the Titanic, other than those aboard the Carpathia are alive, was abandoned this afternoon," the Grand Forks Times announced
"This is the most awful ocean calamity ever known ... one of those heartsickening catastrophes that come at long intervals to blot the pages of history," the same day in an editorial labeled "A horror of horrors."
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Victims finally came ashore and which started the real reckoning. An investigation was The death toll mounted 鈥� of about 2,200 passengers and crew aboard, only 700 had survived.
The newspapers began to name those who weren't in first-class cabins, such as As a coal stoker's helper, the Danish immigrant would have been in the ship's bowels, fueling its massive boilers.
Some reports with a similar name to one of the victims. Others remarked on their close brush with death, including Dr. Archie McCannel, of Minot, North Dakota.
He "probably owes his life to the fact that he was anxious to return to the magic city and decided not to wait until the Titanic sailed,"
Carrie Chaffee, of Amenia, North Dakota, now ashore from the disaster, Her husband, Herbert, had pushed her aboard an overloaded lifeboat, and she assumed they would be reunited shortly. But she reported hearing an odd sound.
"As we pulled away, for the first time, I understood the low purring sound. It was the water rushing into the Titanic's side, and my heart seemed to stop. The great vessel was perceptibly lowering in the water," with her husband likely still aboard, she said. "I began then to feel a horrible fear, and tried to make out Mr. Chaffee among the dark shadows against the rails. Lights were blazing behind them and boats dropping in front with a whirr and tackle. I never saw him again."
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