How the Telegraph reported the Titanic's sinking (From Lancashire Telegraph)

How the Telegraph reported the Titanic's sinking

5:56pm Friday 13th April 2012 in News

THE sheer scale of the Titanic disaster unfolded slowly for anxious relatives and friends back in Britain.

And the Northern Daily Telegraph of April 15 was already foreshadowing the greatest maritime catastrophe of the age.

Early reports from correspondents had detailed the iceberg collision but it was not until the next day that people’s worst fears were realised.

Several editors across the UK were left hugely embarrassed when initial claims that all passengers and crew had been rescued and were being transported to New York.

But the April 16 edition of the NDT, the forerunner to the Lancashire Telegraph, were noting that around 1,500 people had perished.

Within days the heroic exploits of Wallace Hartley and his band were in print, amid articles detailing how East Lancashire churches were holding memorial services, and relief funds were being established.

And Hartley’s friend Ellwand Moody, according to a Telegraph correspondent, had confirmed ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ was a likely choice, if he was ever stranded aboard a sinking ship.