DESPITE all the films, dramas, documentaries and online information, little tells the story of the Titanic like the newspaper reports reflecting as they did, the news as it came in.

Reports in the Bournemouth Echo detail the terrible false hope, the despair and the confusion and anger which surrounded the event.

Along with most other newspapers of the day, the Bournemouth Echo sincerely believed the ship was limping towards Halifax. ‘Titanic slowly Making for Cape Race’, we stated. “It is thought the bulkheads will prevent her from sinking.”

We spoke of a ‘mishap’ to the ship and stated: “A wireless message to Halifax states that all the passengers were taken off the Titanic at 3.30am.”

It did not help that the vice president of the White Star company ‘announced that the Titanic was unsinkable’.

By the afternoon of Tuesday April 16 the mood had changed. “There is, unfortunately, now no possible doubt that the maiden voyage of the Titanic, the largest vessel in the world, ended in disaster unprecedented in the annals of ocean tragedy,” we reported.

On the same page we acknowledged the growing bewilderment over the lack of response to the frantic wireless messages to the first ship on the scene. “More mysterious is the refusal of the Carpathia to give information which hundreds of anxious friends and relatives of the passengers are eagerly awaiting,” we said.

That bewilderment turned to naked fury in New York where, we reported: “Hundreds of weeping women and frantic men stormed the New York offices of the White Star line today.”

Adding to the misery was the fact that no one seemed able to produce a coherent list of the deceased and the saved.

And when they did, it was the first-class passengers whose names were released first.