On Monday, April 15, 1912, it became known in London that the Titanic, the largest and most luxurious ship in the world, had sunk in the Atlantic Ocean just five days after leaving Southampton on its maiden voyage to New York.
Shortly after 11.40 p.m. on Sunday the 14th, the great ship had struck an iceberg a few hundred miles south of Newfoundland; it sank at 2.20 a.m. on Monday morning.
The luxury liner had over 2,200 people on board, and all the reports agreed that most of them had lost their lives.
This was, unfortunately, true. When, a few days later, more exact information was available, it was found that only about 700 passengers and crew had survived.
The world was deeply shocked by the disaster. The Titanic, regarded as the greatest engineering feat of its time, had been considered unsinkable. «Don’t worry! God himself could not sink this ship,» a sailor had told an anxious passenger on embarkation. People’s confidence in technology, almost boundless before the disaster, was badly shaken.