The Titanic disaster was, it goes without saying, perhaps one of the most well-known sea disasters in modern history.
When the ship was first launched, was there a lot of fanfare surrounding it? When the ship sank, did the newspapers have to spend a lot of time catching people up on what exactly made the Titanic so special to begin with? Or was the maiden voyage already international news before tragedy struck?
According to a book I read some years back (whose title escapes me at the moment), Harland & Wolff weren’t big on christenings or other launch ceremonies. To quote one of the yard workers, “they just builds 'er and shoves 'er in.”
100,000 people watching, according to the website. I think that sounds highly inflated, but if it is accurate,even if the number was 10,000, that’s a lot for a ship launch.
The Titanic was big news.
Contemporary news article:
NYT. The first class passengers were the Kardashians of the day:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0415.html
One more. Reproduction of a newspaper ad touting what the future should have been, if not for the evil iceberg that had its own plans:
The launch definitely made the papers around the world. Here’s an Australian sampling - most of it was about the technical details, and the crowd is measured only in ‘many thousands’, but it would have given the flavour of technological marvels being made into reality.
North West Times and Emu Bay Advocate
The big angle was that it had an equally huge sister ship, the Olympic, so it would have felt like a new age dawning.
The Olympic was launched six months before Titanic. I’d think that one would have been the newsworthy one.