Initial Newspaper Accounts on the Titanic in 1912 Say Passengers were All Rescued

TitanicArchive.com unearths details about the 1912 disaster.

(PRWEB) March 10, 2006 -- "Titanic's Passengers All Rescued," read the headline in the Syracuse Herald Journal on April 15, 1912. While the Titanic is known today as one of the greatest maritime disasters in history, initial newspaper accounts in April of 1912 reported that "the passengers of the Titanic were taken off in small boats and transferred to the Carpathia without a single life being lost" and "the Titanic was low in the water, but that Captain Smith and his crew had hopes of being able to bring her limping into Halifax, where she will be docked for repairs."

TitanicArchive.com, the newest free newspaper archive sponsored by NewspaperARCHIVE.com, contains unique historic newspaper articles that detail the building, sinking and aftermath of the Titanic. Thousands of historic articles on the disaster can be found in the database, including articles about J. Bruce Ismay, managing officer of the White Star Line, Captain Edward Smith and famous passengers like Mrs. J. "Molly" Brown and Macy's Department Store Owner Isidor Straus. The archive also contains articles about more recent events, such the discovery of the wreck in 1985.

"It's just fascinating to watch the progression of newspaper accounts from April of 1912," said Jeff Kiley, Director of Sales and Marketing for NewspaperARCHIVE.com. "On April 15, 1912, several Americans went to bed thinking their relatives, friends and loved ones on the Titanic were safe, only to find the next day that more than 1,500 passengers went down with the ship."

Along with the newspaper archive, the website contains a timeline detailed with newspaper accounts. The timeline begins in 1902 when a newspaper article announces the sale of the White Star Line to J.P. Morgan and ends in 2001 when a New York couple, David Leibowitz and Kimberly Miller, marry in a deep sea submersible at Titanic's gravesite. Each entry in the timeline includes a detailed newspaper account. For example, when "The Unsinkable" Molly Brown dies at the age of 65 in 1932, an article from the The Oakland Tribune on October 28, 1932, announces her death.

"The historic newspaper articles take you back in time to one of the most famous disasters in history," said Greg Hollingsworth, researcher for the site. "The articles do more than just report the events; they reveal the shock and sadness of the tragedy."

With the use of Adobe Reader and Optical Character Recognition technology, students and researchers can quickly obtain historical articles about the Titanic by searching with key words or dates. For example, to find articles about the construction of the Titanic, just search with the word "built" between 1909 (the year construction began) and 1912 (the year of the maiden voyage). Articles about specific people, such as J. Bruce Ismay, can be found by just typing in their name.

Researchers interested in finding more information about Titanic can also go to NewspaperARCHIVE.com where there are more than 52,000 newspaper pages about the ship. NewspaperARCHIVE.com, the largest newspaper database available online, is owned by Heritage Microfilm and began in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1999. TitanicArchive.com is part of a series of free newspaper archives that include MartinLutherKingJrArchive.com, AbrahamLincolnArchive.com, WinterGamesArchive.com and AsbestosArchive.com.

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