After the Titanic Sank, Families and Friends of People on the Ship Anxiously Waited to See Who Survived and Who Perished
A newspaper detailing the accounts of loved ones, published on April 20, 1912, was recently discovered in a wardrobe and sold at auction
On the evening of April 14, 1912, the Titanic was steaming across the North Atlantic when it collided with an iceberg. The ship, which was making its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, sank a few hours later in the early morning of April 15.
In the aftermath of the disaster, it wasn’t immediately clear which of the 2,240 passengers and crew members had perished and which had survived. In Southampton, friends and family members waited anxiously outside the offices of the White Star Line, the company that owned the Titanic, for officials to post a list of survivors.
A photojournalist for the British newspaper the Daily Mirror captured the tragic scene. A photograph appeared on the front page of the newspaper’s April 20, 1912 edition under the headline: “One of the thousands of tragedies which made the Titanic wreck the most horrible in the world’s history.”
In Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, a grandmother held on to her copy of the newspaper. During a recent house clearance by Hansons Auctioneers, the historic document was discovered in a wardrobe. It sold last week at auction for $45 (£34).
“There’s … a tendency to focus on the ship’s death toll rather than the victims’ families back home,” says Charles Hanson, owner of Hansons Auctioneers, in a statement. “But when you see the faces of those involved, it’s very moving.”
The unnamed grandmother kept newspapers from other major events, including George V’s coronation in 1911. But the Titanic spread in the Daily Mirror piqued the interest of the auctioneer, who described it as a “valuable piece of social history.”
The newspaper dedicated eight pages of its April 20, 1912, newspaper to the Titanic. The large photo on the front page shows two women—one who is holding a baby—standing next to uniformed men near a building.
A short story under the photo reads, in part: “Yesterday was a terrible day in the history of [Southampton], though it put an end to all suspense. A list of the saved was posted … and mothers and wives who had been hoping against hope eagerly read the names, only to find their worst fears were realized.”
The loved ones of survivors, meanwhile, “hushed their joy in the presence of the terrible grief of their friends and neighbors,” according to the story.
Many of the crew members who worked aboard the Titanic lived in Southampton, but similar lists were also posted in New York and London, according to the newspaper.
In addition to the front page coverage, the publication also ran a double-page spread featuring photos of some of the victims, including the Titanic’s captain Edward Smith. The headline is a Bible verse: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
In the end, an estimated 1,500 travelers died in the disaster, nearly half of them crew members. Around 700 survived by climbing into lifeboats, which could not accommodate all of the people onboard. A nearby ship, the Carpathia, arrived around an hour after the sinking, picked up the survivors and transported them to New York.
More than a century later, the Titanic remains a source of fascination for many historians, researchers and members of the public. In May 2023, researchers created the first full-sized 3D scan of the Titanic, offering an unprecedented look at the wreck site some 2.4 miles below the surface. Later that same year, five people died aboard a submersible while trying to visit the wreckage. And earlier this year, the infamous floating “door” prop from the 1997 Titanic movie sold at auction for more than $700,000.
