I'm so glad you've joined me on Lights Out Library tonight.

If you'd like to listen ad-free and unlock bonus episodes, then please consider joining our Patreon.

There's a link for it in the episode description.

Now, a quick word from our sponsors before tonight's story begins.

Hello, everyone. I'm Olympia. Thank you for being here with me in this wonderful place called

Lights Out Library,

and I have a great story to tell you.

Our story tonight will take us on the waves of the Atlantic Ocean

and on some of the largest passenger ships ever built, ocean liners.

We will relive the competition between lines and ships to be the fastest, the largest, the fanciest.

I'll tell you about the experience of European migrants traveling to America, of wealthy tourists and businessmen crossing

the ocean on these floating palaces. We will relive the stories of some of the most famous

liners from the 20th century, like the Titanic and its starship the Olympic,

the Queen Mary, the SS Normandy, the SS United States, the Bremen and the Rex.

So let's begin right now with arguably the most famous of them all,

even though it is for a tragic reason, the Titanic.

I'm not going to retell the night of the sinking because you know the story and it is spectacular,

but also sad, and and it is spectacular, but also sad.

And also it could suggest that crossing the Atlantic in the 20th century on liners was something dangerous, when in reality it wasn't, at least during peacetime.

Another large liner sank a few years later.

The Lusitania, during the First World War, after it was attacked by submarines.

But the disaster of the Titanic is one of the two big accidents that happened over thousands and thousands of crossings.

...