San Antonio College Library

A look at the disaster that shocked the world on May 7, 1915, when the state-of-the-art ocean liner sank after being struck by a German U-Boat torpedo that killed over 1100 passengers.

In the late nineteenth century, people were obsessed by one of the last unmapped areas of the globe: the North Pole. No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans, although theories abounded. The foremost cartographer in the world, a German named August Petermann, believed that warm currents sustained a verdant island at the top of the world. National glory would fall to whoever could plant his flag upon its shores....