English: The SS Atlantic left Liverpool, England, for New York on 20 March 1873. Eleven days later, the captain decided to steam to Halifax, Nova Scotia, the nearest port, because the vessel's coal supply was running low. However, en route, the ship went ashore at Mars Head, near Lower Prospect, in the early morning of 1 April. The loss of life was horrendous — 565 passengers and crew. The disaster was the world's worst merchant shipwreck known at that time. Photograph of a lithograph originally published by Currier and Ives.