RECENT articles in the Daily Echo and the Saturday Magazine have described the sinking of the Titanic as being the worst tragedy in maritime history.
This is not so. A far worse tragedy took place on January 31, 1945 when the German liner MV Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea, with the loss of around 9,000 lives, many of them children.
The Titanic was no doubt the biggest maritime tragedy in peace time, but in terms of lives lost, did not compare with the German ship, when the fatalities were approximately six times as many.
Such was the intensity of the fighting on the Eastern front in early 1945, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff would not have attracted particular attention.
N SHELLEY, Ensbury Park
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