The White Star Line steamship Atlantic struck rocks near Lower Prospect, Nova Scotia, in April 1873 while attempting to reach Halifax for coal. More than 500 passengers and crew died, including every woman aboard. It was one of the deadliest North Atlantic passenger disasters before Titanic.

Atlantic inspired newspaper poems, broadsides and mourning verse on both sides of the ocean. These works established themes later associated with Titanic poetry: class, migration, technological confidence and families separated at the moment of disaster.