THE GREATEST MARINE DISASTER IN HISTORY

WORLD’S LARGEST VESSEL FOUNDERS ON HER MAIDEN VOYAGE

ESTIMATES OF LOSS OF LIFE VARY FROM THIRTEEN TO EIGHTEEN HUNDRED.

Titanic Goes Down in the Early Morning Before Vessels Summoned to Her Rescue by Wireless Arrive on the Scene---Women and Children Constitute Majority of Those Saved---First Cabin Passengers Probably Rescued.

According to a despatch received early this morning from New York all but about 450 of the Titanic’s passengers are accounted for. This, with a crew reported to be 860 strong, would bring the total number who perished to approximately 1,310.

NEW YORK, April 15. – A message from the steamer Olympic reporting the sinking of the Titanic and the rescue of 675 survivors, which reached here late to-night, expressed the opinion that 1,800 lives were lost.

“Loss likely to total 1,800 souls,” the despatch read in its concluding sentence.

It is hoped and believed here that this is an error, unless the Titanic had more passengers on board than were reported. The list as given out showed 1,310 passengers and a crew of 860, or 2,170 persons in all. Deducting 675, the known saved, would indicate a loss of 1,495 persons.

The Olympic’s despatch follows: --
“Carpathia reached Titanic position at daybreak. Found boats and wreckage duly, Titanic sank about 2.30 a.m., in 41.16 N., 50.14 W. All her boats accounted for, containing about 675 souls saved, crew and passengers included. Nearly all saved were women and children. Leyland liner Californian remained and searching exact position of disaster. Loss likely to total 1,800 souls.”

A message received at a later hour gave the number of survivors as 866, which would reduce the losses to 1,304 with the qualifications stated.

EARLIER STORY SAID 1,500 LOST.

More than 1,500 persons, it is feared, sank to their death early today, when within four hours after she crashed into an iceberg, the mammoth White Star liner Titanic, bound from Southampton to New York on her maiden voyage, foundered off the Newfoundland Banks. Of the approximately 2,200 persons on board the giant liner, some of them of world-wide prominence, only 675 are known to have been saved. The White Star Line offices in New York, while keeping up hope to the last were free to admit that there had been “horrible loss of life.”

GREATEST MARINE DISASTER.

Accepting the early estimates of the fatality list as accurate, the disaster is the greatest in the marine history of the world. Nearest approaching it in magnitude were the disasters to the steamer Atlantic in 1872, when 574 lives were lost, and to the Bourgogne in 1898, with a fatality list of 517. Should it prove that other liners, notably the Allan liners, Parisian and Virginian, known to have been in the vicinity of the Titanic early to-day, had picked up others of her passengers, the extent of the calamity would be greatly reduced. This hope still remains.

News of the sinking of the liner and the terrible loss of life in consequence came early this evening with all the greater shock because hope had been buoyed up all day by reports that the steamship, although badly damaged, was not in a sinking condition, and that all her passengers had been safely taken off. The messages were mostly unofficial, however, and none came direct from the liner, so that a lurking fear remained of possible bad news to come.