RMS Carpathia

“ Thinking over the scene that met our eyes from the deck of the Carpathia after we boarded her,—the great number of icebergs wherever the eye could reach,—the chances of not hitting one in the darkness of the night seemed small. Indeed, the more one thinks about the Carpathia coming at full speed through all those icebergs in the darkness, the more inexplicable does it seem. True, the captain had an extra lookout watch and every sense of every man on the bridge alert to detect the least sign of danger, and again he was not going so fast as the Titanic and would have his ship under more control ”

“ The hand of nature portrayed a scenic effect beyond the ken of the human mind. The heretofore smooth sea became choppy and retarded their progress. All the while the people in boat No. 6 saw the other small lifeboats being hauled aboard the Carpathia. By the time their boat reached the Carpathia a heavy sea was running, and, No. 6 boat being among the last to approach, it was found difficult to get close to the ship. Three or four unsuccessful attempts were made. Each time they were dashed against the keel, and bounded off like a rubber ball. ”

“ Meanwhile, the passengers of the Carpathia, some of them aroused by the unusual vibration of the screw, some by sailors tramping overhead as they swung away the lifeboats and got ropes and lowering tackle ready, were beginning to come on deck just as day broke; and here an extraordinary sight met their eyes. As far as the eye could reach to the north and west lay an unbroken stretch of field ice, with icebergs still attached to the floe and rearing aloft their mass as a hill might suddenly rise from a level plain. ”

“ We felt we could never reach the Carpathia when we found she had stopped, and afterwards when we asked why she didn’t come closer we were told that some of the early boats which put off from the starboard side reached her a little after four, while it was after six when we drew under the side of the open hatch.
“It had been a long trying row in the heavy sea and impossible to keep bow on to reach the ship. We stood in great danger of being swamped many times and Captain Rostron, who watched us come up, said he doubted if we could have lived an hour longer in that high sea. ”

“ Some of these boats were lowered and reached the Carpathia with many vacant seats. The anguish of the young wives in such circumstances can only be imagined. In other parts of the ship, however, a different interpretation was placed on the rule, and men were allowed and even invited by officers to get in—not only to form part of the crew, but even as passengers. ”

“ Had Harold Cotton, Marconi operator on the Carpathia, gone to bed Sunday night at his usual time, the Carpathia would have known nothing of the Titanic’s plight, and the lifeboats, without food or water, might have been the scenes of even greater tragedy than the great death ship itself. ”

“ It is obvious that these figures are quite unreliable, for only 712 were in fact saved by the Carpathia, the steamer which came to the rescue at about 4 a. m., and all the boats were accounted for. Another remarkable discrepancy is that, of the 712 saved, 189 were in fact men of the crew, 129 were male passengers, and 394 were women and children. In other words, the real proportion of women to men saved was much less than the proportion appearing in the evidence from the boats. ”

“ There was a heavy fog and they could not see one hundred fathoms off over the clashing and grinding ice that floated in fields on every side. Soon after seven o'clock in the morning the ship came in sight and presently hove to among the fleet of boats and liferafts—the steamship Carpathia, out of New York on April 11th for Mediterranean ports. She began at once to take aboard the survivors, and in a few hours had every boat hoisted aboard. The Olympic and Baltic, learning by wireless that the rescues had all been effected, proceeded on their way. ”

“ Nothing has been a greater surprise than to find people that do not act in conditions of danger and grief as they would be generally supposed to act—and, I must add, as they are generally described as acting.
And so, with her work of rescue well done, the good ship Carpathia returned to New York. Everyone who came in her, everyone on the dock, and everyone who heard of her journey will agree with Captain Rostron when he says: "I thank God that I was within wireless hailing distance, and that I got there in time to pick up the survivors of the wreck." ”

“ All the women on our boat got their heavy clothing and threw it around the survivors. Captain Rostrom told us to take them to our staterooms, and we did all we could to make them comfortable.
NEARLY ALL BOATS TAKEN FROM WATER.
“I did not go on deck again until an hour or more had passed; by that time the crew of the Carpathia had taken nearly all the boats from the water. I saw three loads of passengers taken from the boats and the mate of the Carpathia said there were about 800 saved. Captain Rostrom had tears in his eyes while he was directing the work of rescue. ”

“ It is not at all surprising that some survivors felt quieter on the Carpathia with its lack of news from the outside world, if the following extract from a leading New York evening paper was some of the material of which the "atmosphere" on shore was composed:—"Stunned by the terrific impact, the dazed passengers rushed from their staterooms into the main saloon amid the crash of splintering steel, rending of plates and shattering of girders, while the boom of falling pinnacles of ice upon the broken deck of the great vessel added to the horror.... ”

“ The men who were supposed to be rowing—one was a fireman—made no effort to keep away from it. They were all the time looking towards the horizon. With daylight we saw the Carpathia, and not so very long afterwards Officer Lowe, sailing towards us, for, as he had predicted, quite a strong breeze had sprung up. We caught the rope which he threw us from the stern of his boat. Someone in ours succeeded in catching it and we were taken in tow to the Carpathia.”
BOAT NO. 16. [14]
[14] British Report (p. 38) gives this as the sixth boat lowered from the port side at 1.35 A. M.
No male passengers. ”

“ All the passengers who could bear nourishment were taken into the dining rooms and cabins by Captain Rostron and given food and stimulants. Passengers of the Carpathia gave up their berths and staterooms to the survivors.
As soon as they were landed on the Carpathia many of the women became hysterical, but on the whole they behaved splendidly. Men and women appeared to be stunned all day Monday, the full force of the disaster not reaching them until Tuesday night. ”

“ There were no beacon torches on crag and cliff; no shouts in the pauses of the storm to tell them there was hope; nor deep-toned bell with its loudest peal sending cheerily, o’er the deep, comfort to these wretched souls in their extremity. There were, however, lights forward and on the port side to be seen all the time until the Carpathia appeared. These lights were only those of the Titanic’s other lifeboats, and thus it was, as they gazed with eager, anxious eyes that
“Fresh hope did give them strength and strength deliverance.” ”

“ They fixed up beds in the smoking rooms, and mattresses everywhere. All the women who were rescued were given the best staterooms, which were surrendered by the regular passengers. None of the regular passengers grumbled because their trip to Europe was interrupted, nor did they complain that they were put to the inconvenience of receiving hundreds of strangers.
"The women on board the Carpathia were particularly kind. It shows that for every cruelty of nature there is a kindness, for every misfortune there is some goodness. ”

“ Before we left the Carpathia all the people rescued were photographed together. We members of the crew wrote our names on Lady Duff Gordon’s lifebelt. From the time we first left off rowing until the time the vessel sank, Lady Duff Gordon was violently seasick and lying on the oars. ”

“ I imagine the boats must have spread themselves over the ocean fanwise as they escaped from the Titanic: those on the starboard and port sides forward being almost dead ahead of her and the stern boats being broadside from her; this explains why the port boats were so much longer in reaching the Carpathia—as late as 8.30 A.M.—while some of the starboard boats came up as early as 4.10 A.M. Some of the port boats had to row across the place where the Titanic sank to get to the Carpathia, through the debris of chairs and wreckage of all kinds. ”

“ Everybody was too be-numbed by horror to speak. It was a time for action and not words.
“Not a tear dimmed the eyes of one of the hundreds we got on deck. The women were less excited than the men. Apparently they all had drained their tear ducts dry, for every eye was red and swollen.”
One of the most interesting accounts of the Titanic disaster which has come to light is in a letter written on board the Carpathia by Dr. Alice Leeder, of New York, one of the survivors, after she had been transferred to the Carpathia in a lifeboat. ”

“ As I have said, we did not try for the Frankfurt for{251} any length of time, but concentrated our messages on the Carpathia, which had answered that she was rushing to our aid.”
“From time to time either Mr. Phillips or I would go on deck to observe the situation. The last time I went on deck I found the passengers running around in confusion and there was almost a panic.
“They were seeking lifebelts. All of the large lifeboats were gone, but there was one liferaft remaining. It had been lashed on the top of the quarters on the boat deck. A number of men were striving to launch it. ”

“ The foolish Frankfurt operator still occasionally interrupted with a question, and he was finally told, with such brusqueness as the wireless is capable of, to keep away from his instrument and not interfere with the serious conversations of the Titanic and Carpathia.
Then Bride took Phillips’s place at the instrument and succeeded in getting a whisper from the Baltic, and gradually, over hundreds of miles of ocean, the invisible [133] ether told the ships that their giant sister was in distress. ”

“ The following statement issued by a committee of the surviving passengers was given the press on the arrival of the Carpathia.
“We, the undersigned surviving passengers from the S. S. Titanic, in order to forestall any sensational or exaggerated statements, deem it our duty to give the press a statement of facts which have come to our knowledge and which we believe to be true. ”

“ He recovered by the time that we got back to the Carpathia.
A Japanese or Chinese young fellow that we picked up on top of some wreckage, which may have been a sideboard or a table that was floating around, also survived. [13] We stopped (in the wreckage) until daybreak, and we saw in the distance an Engelhardt collapsible boat (“A”) with a crew of men in it. We went over to the boat and found twenty men and one woman; also three dead bodies, which we left. Returning under sail we took another collapsible boat in tow (boat “D”) containing fully sixty people, women and children. ”

“ Resolutions were adopted praising the Titanic’s surviving officers and crew and the officers, crew and passengers of the Carpathia, and declaring that a memorial is needed for “those who in heroic self-sacrifice made possible the rescue of so many others.” ”

“ It is a narrative filled with heroism unparalleled—bravery and heroism performed by American business men. They were men of millions who had everything to live for and yet, in that crisis at sea, they worked coolly, steadfastly to save women and children. Then they went down with the White Star liner Titanic, the greatest ship afloat.
When the Carpathia came into port carrying the more than 700 survivors of the disaster, the curtain, which had hidden the story of the tragedy since the first word of it was flashed to a startled world, was drawn aside. ”

“ There were only about twelve women and the rest were men—three crew and thirteen male passengers; several unmarried men—three or four of them foreigners. Somewhat later five people were put into our boat from another one, making thirty-three in ours. Then we rowed still further away as the women were nervous about suction. We had no compass and no light. We arrived at the Carpathia five or ten minutes after five. The conduct of the crew, as far as I could see, was absolutely beyond criticism. One of the crew in the boat was Jack Edmonds, (?) ”

“ We were the second boat (No. 8) that got away from the ship and we saw nothing that happened after that. We were not near enough. We heard the yells of the passengers as they went down, but we saw none of the harrowing part of it. The women in our boat all rowed—every one of them. Miss Young rowed every minute. The men (the stewards) did not know the first thing about it and could not row. Mrs. Swift rowed all the way to the Carpathia. Countess Rothes stood at the tiller. Where would we have been if it had not been for the women, with such men as were put in charge of the boat? ”

“ He said that when the Carpathia, on the morning after the disaster, steamed through a lot of the Titanic’s floating wreckage, he was surprised to note great quantities of broken bits of cork, such as are used in life preservers. He was astonished also that he did not see a larger number of floating bodies.
“I have always supposed,” said Major Peuchen, who is an experienced yachtsman, “that a life preserver in good condition would sustain a dead body as well as a live one.” ”