Notable disasters - The sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912, with 1,517 fatalities, is probably the most famous shipwreck, but not the biggest in terms of life lost. The wartime sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945 in World War II by a Soviet Navy submarine, with an estimated loss of about 9,400 people, remains the greatest maritime disaster ever. In peacetime, the 1987 loss of the...