"The Titanic", also known as "It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down" and "Titanic (Husbands and Wives)" is an American folk song and children's song. "The Titanic" is about the sinking of RMS Titanic which sank on April 15, 1912 after striking an iceberg. The first folk songs about the Titanic disaster appeared within weeks after the disaster. Recordings of various songs about the disaster date to as early as 1913. This is not the same as "The Titanic" as sung by the Carter Family. There are several regional variations on the song. According to Newman I. White's 1928 book American Negro Folk-Songs, "The Titanic" has been traced back to 1915 or 1916 in Hackleburg, Alabama. Other versions from around 1920 are documented in the Frank C. Brown Collection at Duke University in North Carolina. Early recordings include Ernest Stoneman's "The Titanic" in September 1924 and William and Versey Smith's "When That Great Ship Went Down" in August 1927. According to Jeff Place, in his notes for the Anthology of American Folk Music: "African-American musicians, in particular, found it noteworthy and ironic that company policies had kept Blacks from the doomed ship; the sinking was also attributed by some to divine retribution." It was recorded by William and Versey Smith on Anthology of American Folk Music (1952), Lead Belly on The Titanic (Volume 4), Bessie Jones on The Alan Lomax Collection Sampler (1997), Woody Guthrie on The Asch Recordings, Vol. 1: This Land Is Your Land (1999), Pert Near Sandstone on "Paradise hop" version called "Sad When the Great Bridge Came Down" (2011), Ernest Stoneman on The Face That Never Returned / The Sinking of the Titanic (singles) (1924), Mance Lipscomb on Texas Songster Volume 2 (1964), Pete Seeger on Headlines and Footnotes: A Collection of Topical Songs (1999). It appears on a number of "folk song" websites.