It was described as a "gala day on Tyneside" - Thursday, September 20, 1906 - and was one that remained in living memory for decades.
Despite a chill in the early autumn air and an overcast sky, thousands gathered to watch the launch of the RMS Mauretania at the Wallsend yard of Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson.
On both banks of the River Tyne and on the quays to the east and west of the building slip, huge crowds assembled.
The Evening Chronicle reported how, on the Shields ferry “passengers seemed to be hanging on to her funnel and to the sides of the wheelhouse.
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“And on the Durham side’s ballast hill (at Hebburn ), Novocastrians and visitors occupied every space so the mound looked like a human pyramid.”
Of all the great ships built on the River Tyne, none is more famous than the Cunard ocean liner RMS Mauretania.
Launched at Swan Hunter’s Wallsend yard, 115 years ago, in September 1906, the mighty vessel was completed the following year.
The Mauretania’s career spanned four decades, and she was the largest and fastest ship in the world, ahead of her sister ship, Lusitania.
She left the River Tyne in October 1907, towed out to the open sea to the sound of ships’ sirens and the applause of thousands of spectators, before steaming her way to Liverpool, her home port.
At the time of her launch, she was the largest moving structure ever built. Designed to carry 560 passengers in first class, 475 in second, and 1,300 in third, plus a crew of 812, she weighed more than 30,000 tons and achieved a speed in trials of 26 knots.
Mauretania departed for Liverpool on her maiden voyage in November 1907 under the command of her first captain, John Pritchard, and later that month captured the record for the fastest eastbound crossing of the Atlantic.
In September 1909, the Mauretania captured the Blue Riband for the fastest westbound crossing.
Back in 1839 the fastest Atlantic crossing had taken thirty days to New York – and twenty days back. Mauretania could do it in five days each way.
The ship represented a new brand of 20th century style. The first-class accommodation was a marvel of Edwardian opulence, with the principal rooms in luxurious French and Italian Renaissance styles.
During World War I, her sister ship Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine off the Irish coast with heavy loss of life in 1915.
Mauretania, meanwhile, was used as a hospital ship. After the war she returned to her civilian trade, until being scrapped at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth in 1935.
One hundred and fifteen years after the momentous day of her launch, the name Mauretania is still remembered on Tyneside.
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