The New York Times, the second of January, 1916. Three days earlier, luncheon was being served aboard the P&O liner Persia off the coast of Crete, the loveliest day of the winter, when the torpedo struck without warning. She was forty years old and she had four minutes. Of the five hundred and nineteen people aboard, three hundred and forty-three were lost. Only fifteen women lived. She has no grave but the sea.
Eleanor Velasco Thornton drowned with the SS Persia at the end of December 1915. Eleven days before she drowned, she wrote to his wife and gave away her seat in the lifeboat.
Source: genuine front page of The New York Times, published 2 January 1916 and therefore public domain in the United States. Passenger figures and the four minutes as used in the novel’s publisher A+ record.