Was there a satirical 1912 news article mocking people claiming to have "just missed" the Titanic?

[Tristin Hopper]

I'm a Canadian journalist who has been trying for months to find a satirical news or magazine article that I believe was published just after the sinking.

If my memory is correct (I remember seeing it in a documentary as a child), the headline was something like "Titanic 'just missed' list grows to 10,000." It was making fun of the large number of people at the time claiming that they had "just missed" passage on the Titanic (and indeed that's still true today; practically anyone with a relative who crossed the Atlantic in 1912 likes to claim that the ancestor "just missed" passage on the Titanic).

Has anyone on this forum ever encountered such an article? My memory is that it was from the era just after the Titanic, although I may be wrong and it may be more modern.

 

[Ioannis Georgiou]

This is from the Milwaukee Times April 1912 "To Date Only About 6,000 Were About to Take
Titanic But Changed Their Minds
It's certain that two boats the size of Titanic could not carry the crowds that 'just missed taking' the lost ship.
To date 3,482 Americans, 2,950 Britons and 476 scattered, all more or less prominent, have entered the "Just Missed It Club."
It appears that 4,965 of these had engaged passage, but cancelled their reservations before the Titanic sailed. Of this number, 899 had premonitions of disaster. The rest were in Paris and couldn't break away.
Of the balance, 732 are glad they were not aboard at the time, as they surely would have come home on the Titanic.
Firesides of future generations are sure to be thrilled by grandfather's story of how his paternal ancestor 'just missed it"

 

[Tristin Hopper]

That's it! I can't thank you enough.

 

[Jude]

Hi Tristan - glad you've got your answer!

A friend of mine was very friendly with one of Marconi's daughters and she recounts how the family were excited about being invited to sail on the Titanic's maiden voyage, but Marconi had so much work to do (I think she said he was going on a lecture tour) that he decided to sail to the US earlier.

The inventor had himself narrowly escaped disaster when he had been invited to sail on the Titanic's maiden voyage, but ended up heading to New York City earlier on the Lusitania. His wife and children had intended to follow by sailing on the Titanic, but held off by chance when one child fell sick.

How Marconi's Wireless Tech Helped Save Titanic Passengers
His daughter remembers her mother describing how she wept as she watched the Titanic sail out of Southampton, without them.....

 

[Lydia Karlo]

I imagine there were a lot of people who wanted their 15 minutes in the limelight, hence the satires. But not all of it was hooey. When I was a girl, my grandmother told me, in passing, a very interesting story. My Ruthenian great grandfather did what many eastern European immigrants did in the early twentieth century--he came to America ahead of his family, and when he had established himself here (in Barberton, Ohio, where my father was later born in 1921) he sent for his wife and daughter. I'm not certain about the particulars here, (as my grandmother didn't go into specifics and I was too young and doltish to ask) but somehow, they ended up with tickets for the Titanic. They were heading for Cherbourg by way of Hamburg, where a cousin happened to be getting married. Encouraged to stay for the wedding, they did not get to Cherbourg in time, and missed the sailing. They had to take a ship called the Prince Oskar, and Grandma remembered vividly how horrid the crossing was, with rough seas and stormy weather. Her mother was seasick for the entire voyage. I somehow think things would have been a WHOLE lot different had they made it for the Titanic's fateful sailing. Maybe I wouldn't even be here writing this. Fate is a strange mistress.