It was a standard run for for the Prinz Fredrich Wilhelm, another eastbound trip for the mid sized liner headed to her home port of Breman. That afternoon, she crossed another German ship- an oil tanker, the Deutschland stranded on her way to Philadelphia. Unable to assist, she radioed to surrounding ships and left the Deutschland to await assistance. There were plenty around, but not all were convenient. She'd even reached one of the massive new liners who could have towed her easily. But she was 300 miles away and not of immediate help.

The Deutschland was another casualty of the coal strike and ongoing coal shortage which had severely limited crossings in the heavy shipping lanes, forcing companies to load the passenger lists of several ships onto one to conserve fuel. Less than 2 weeks earlier, one of the big ocean liners had overloaded her coal supplies, filling her third class dining room with extra coal to try and make the trip.

Deutschland was not so lucky. No coal left, she stopped mid-ocean and there she stayed for a day until the next evening, when she was rescued by SS Asian, a smaller liner who hooked her up, and began towing her to Halifax.

Shortly after 1am, as Asian steamed west/northwest with Deutschland in tow, she picked up an odd wireless message from the same liner that Deutschland's call for tow had reached earlier. A call for help, an iceberg, a collision. It was April 14th, 1912.

Meanwhile, the passengers on that liner were confused as to a sudden engine stop and being awoken past midnight. There was some damage, some of the crew said, and the most likely scenario was a tow to Halifax.

At the same time, wireless messages were firing around the North Atlantic that there was distress, the new liner was sinking. The unsinkable ship. Titanic.

Since wireless was a relatively new aspect of sea travel, there was no direct way contact one ship. You would start your message with your call letters, but it could and would be heard by any surrounding vessel. So, it happened on April 14th/15th as Titanic's distress was pinged on and passed around the North Atlantic from ship to ship.

Desperate for news, and overhearing multiple conversations, the worlds most confusing game of telephone started to take place. As ships decided whether they could make Titanic, SS Asian relayed that she was currently already towing Deutschland to Halifax. She was just in the right spot where she could both pick up Titanic's last message- faintly of course- and be heard by the East Coast.

By the morning of April 15th, the world awoke to news of an incident in the North Atlantic. The last anyone had heard was that Carpathia was headed to her, with plans to bring those rescued to Halifax. Carpathia, meanwhile, loaded with survivors, refused to communicate via wireless in an attempt to clear the airwaves and prioritize sending names to families - after they were able to determine exactly who they had.

All this was happening as the papers went to press, and as dawn broke on April 15th, this scant information had been crossed, confused, and interpreted as "Titanic being towed to Halifax" - which was the headline across the entire country.

Which was what everyone assumed was the case, even as Titanic had hit the ocean floor hours before. White Star Line sent trains from New York to Canada so as to pick up Titanic's passengers and get them to their agreed upon destination, sleeping cars and coaches prepared for them all.

But even this was confusing. The Washington Times reported that Virginian was towing Titanic while her passengers sat on other vessels waiting for the Baltic which would bring them to New York- calling this "an unparrelled disaster" in the history of sea travel. The Seattle Star reported the same, that news from the Minia, though not confirmed, indicated Titanic would be bought to Cape Race. In New York- the evening news reported that Titanic's passengers were aboard Carpathia and Parisian was also there to assist Virginian in the tow.

By the next day however, all would know the truth. Carpathia would enter New York on April 18th with around 700 survivors, while the Deutschland finally reached land - towed into Halifax the same day.

In this case, you would say Carpathia aborted her mission as she was headed east to Austria Hungary from New York, but had to turn around and bring Titanic's passengers back to New York.

So - how does this answer your question :)? The Titanic story is a pretty good indicator of how towing at sea worked. It was simply the option when a ship was unable to move under her own power, or was damaged enough that she wouldn't make her destination under her own power. For the Deutschland - this was due to coal. For the press of April 15th, it was due to crippling but not severe iceberg damage.

It's important to remember that this was merely an option, but not always necessary. Titanic's sister, Olympic, threw a propeller blade a few months before and after options of towing, or turning around to head to Halifax, EJ Smith -later Titanic's captain- decided she was able to head to Southampton, drop off passengers, and then head to Belfast for repairs under her own - albeit very slow- power.

From there, passengers wouldn't so much be "compensated" as they would be entitled to have their ticket filled at whatever cost to the company. As we saw with White Star, their action was to arrange transport for passengers from Halifax to New York - Titanic's intended destination. A ship forced to turn around would have all her passengers put up and then given passage on a new ship with return of cost if the disparity in service was great.

Although, this got grey :) Legally, a requirement of buying a ticket was that you released the company from responsibility in case something went wrong with the ship itself - that is, you'd be entitled to compensation for "an act of God". This, of course, got very tricky so it was hard for passengers to get anything other than what they'd booked - ie: we promised we'd get you to your destination, we still will. By wanting a refund you forfeit the contract and we are not obligated to fill it.

So, how common was all this? Well, not so common that it didn't make news, but not so uncommon that there wasn't a standard procedure for it :). The Oriflamme lost a propeller as well and had to be towed. The Mexico had to be towed for the same reason. I did a quick newspaper archive search for "ship towed" from 1900-1914 and such an event made the papers a few times a year - obviously with the outbreak of war, incidents at sea rose in number.

So it really depends on how you define "common". Notable ships needing tows would make the paper, and there was a standard practice for those needing assistance. So, common enough to have a plan but not common enough to not be newsworthy :)

EDIT: Sorry, I got distracted and forgot to finish this!

Overall point being, if a ship was past a certain point - simply aborting the journey wasn't an option, hence why towing became something all were prepared to do. If a ship was not past a certain point, a decision would be made to either continue if possible, or to turn around. However, completely returning wasn't really an option as in case of emergency, there was no guarantee the port you left had the ability to fix it. So- as we've seen in these example- it wasn't so much about giving up the trip, but about getting to the nearest possible safe harbor and organizing passage from there.

Olympic did return once- after colliding with another ship not even 20 miles from port. Because she was so close, and because she was an excellent ship, she was able to go back to port at Southampton, drop everyone off, and then head to Belfast - so yes, it was an aborted voyage but she'd been at sea less than an hour so it was just a matter of hours before she was back - hardly a "voyage" at all, she hadn't even left the coast :)

The answer here is really towing- which was standard enough that actually returning to port really required a very specific set of circumstances and, honestly, convenience. Where you headed in the event you could no longer move really depended on where was closest and what you needed.