On the day of her launch, May 31, 1920, the Cunard liner Tyrrhenia made a splash in the Clyde, but was hardly noticed by anyone else. She rated one line on page 13 of the London Times the following day "The Cunard liner Tyrrhenia was launched yesterday from Dalmuir shipyard."

She would make headlines in July of 1940, over a month after she sank. Her loss was a closely guarded secret until reports in the United States press filtered back to England. However, it appears that the sinking was not the top concern to the press, it was the fact that the story had been repressed that really got the press rolling. There were a few stories, not detailed or lengthily ones, nothing in depth and it appears that the story faded into the fog of war soon after.

Perhaps the press were preoccupied by other news about the war, or maybe the Admiralty and No. 10 just wanted the story to fade to black. However it seems strange that the worst disaster in British maritime history, and one of the greatest sea disasters of all time rated so little ink.

A ship launched nine years earlier to the day received so much press when she sank that everyone in the world to this day remembers her name, yet the ship launched as Tyrrhenia, whose name was changed in 1924 to Lancastria, is hardly remembered. Between 3,000 and 5,000 members of the British Expeditionary Force and others were lost in the ship, the true number will never be known. Lancastria a name few knew, but now remembered as the worst sea disaster in British history. The ship launched nine years earlier, on May 31, 1911....Titanic.