On April 12, 1912, the Titanic was speeding towards New York City. The top stories in the New York Sun that day included news of the death of Major General Frederick Dent Grant, Pope Pius X denying reports of his own death, $250,000 going missing from a bank, and news about the New York Democratic Convention.

But in the realm of more shipping news, the front page also announced the order a new “biggest ever” ship.

BIGGEST OF ALL SHIPS ORDERED IN GERMANY

North German Lloyd to Build a 54,000 Tonner to Do 23 Knots.

COST OF IT TEN MILLIONS

Some of the Line’s Lesser Ships Will Probably Go on Canal Route.

After the Hamburg-American Line had announced the building of a ship, the Imperator, of greater dimensions than the giantess Olympic of the White Star fleet, the Cunard company began planning a still bigger storm defier, the Aquitania. The Imperator is designed to be 900 feet long and to measure 50,000 tons gross, and the Aquitania, while no longer will be of greater tonnage. Shipping folks have been waiting to hear what the North German Lloyd, which owns the biggest German built steamship on the seas, the George Washington, was going to do. They heard yesterday, when a cable came to Oetrichs & Co., general agents of the line in this country, saying that a new collosus had been ordered from the Schichau Shipbuilding Compnay of Danzig, and that she will be completed not later than August, 1914. Her tonnage will be practically double that of the George Wahsington, or about 54,000, and she will be of “sufficient speed,” the news agent of the line says, “to make the trip between New York and Plymouth and between Cherbourg and New York with the scheduled certainty of an express train. It is planned to make her the speediest of the new type of ocean steamships.

The new type from the viewpoint of the steamship companies is that introduced by the coming of the Olympic, which can make 22 knots. The belief of the German shipbuilders and owners is that the big and wide and deep ship, that is, the one with the most stability, is what the traveling public prefers to the slim greyhound…

The latest ideas in architecture will be applied to fitting her out. Prof. Bruno Paul, Schroeder and Poppe, architects, have been engaged to work out the details of the interior of the new vessel. One of her features will be the substitution of bedsteads for berths in all rooms. Her name has not been announced, but following the precedent set by the copmany in its latest ship, the George Washington, the name probably will be chosen from some of the illustrious men who have made American history.”

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As far as I can tell, North German Lloyd never built the ship in question. Interestingly, the United States took George Washington got confiscated by the United States during World War I!

Note that the article references the Olympic as the first of a class of ships, with no reference to her (now much more famous) sister the Titanic!