The sinking of RMS Titanic in April 1912 remains the worst, and the most infamous, cruise ship disaster in history. The sinking of the biggest passenger ship ever built at the time resulted in the death of more than 1,500 of the 2,208 people onboard.

The RMS Titanic remains the most infamous and, by volume at the time of its 1912 disaster, the largest passenger liner to ever sink. While modern vessels like the Seawise Giant (a supertanker) were technically larger and also sank (later salvaged), the Titanic is the primary historical answer for the passenger/cruise category. More recently, the Costa Concordia, which foundered in 2012, was significantly larger than the Titanic, with a gross tonnage of approximately 114,147 tons compared to the Titanic's 46,328 tons. The sinking of the Costa Concordia off the coast of Italy involved 32 fatalities and remains the largest modern cruise ship disaster by vessel size. Despite the massive scale of these ships, modern maritime safety protocols (SOLAS) ensure that such events are extremely rare in 2026, with current cruise flagships being over five times the size of the Titanic.