- Original Article
Maritime Tales: Carpathia rescue misson to the Titanic relived
IT STARTED out as a routine voyage between New York and the Adriatic and ended as one of the greatest rescues in the history of the sea.
The Cunard liner was not long on her journey when her radio operator contacted another ship with a standard message and received a desperate distress call in return.
The liner was the Carpathia and she sailed as fast as possible to reach the Titanic, which sank before she arrived.
All 705 of the Titanic’s survivors, and 13 lifeboats that managed to leave the stricken ship were picked up by the Carpathia, which was carrying 700 passengers herself.
Carpathia’s radio operator Harold Cottam had made radio contact with the doomed liner at 12.30am.
Cottam alerted his captain Arthur Rostron who immediately turned his ship around to race at full speed towards Titanic, more than 50 miles away. The first lifeboat carrying survivors was recovered at 4 am and the last at 8 am.
On display at Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress gallery are souvenirs of Carpathia’s rescue.
They include a lifejacket worn by a Titanic survivor and two thole pins (rowlocks) from lifeboat No 9, all obtained by 19-year-old Carpathia crew member Ernest St Clair of Liverpool.
A nameplate from Titanic’s lifeboat no 4 was removed by the Carpathia’s carpenter and given to her young quartermaster J J (Benjamin) Kirkpatrick of Wallasey.
Two brass White Star flag emblems from a Titanic lifeboat were unscrewed by another seaman and mounted on wooden plaques.
An enamel White Star Line notice from about 1910 gives instructions to crews for the launch and use of lifeboats.
Titanic was supplied with 20 lifeboats which could hold a total of just 1,178 people out of a total capacity of 3,547. Although this was within outdated Board of Trade rules, it meant there was no room in the boats for hundreds of other passengers and crew.
There were three types of lifeboat on board – 14 wooden boats each, carrying 65 people, two rescue cutters for 40 people and four collapsibles that could carry 47. The wooden lifeboats were made by Murray’s Boats Ltd of Glasgow.
Titanic also carried 3,500 lifebelts and 48 life rings but they were of limited use in the bitterly cold Atlantic Ocean on the night of the disaster. Many bodies were found wearing lifejackets which kept victims afloat but offered no protection from the elements.
The Carpathia dropped off the empty lifeboats, as property of the White Star Line, when she arrived in New York with the survivors on 18 April 1912.
Buy the Maritime Tales book (£3.99) at the Merseyside Maritime Museum open seven days a week, admission free, and at bookshops, newsagents and merseyshop.com