A Night to Remember

The Carpathia, captained on the night of April 14, 1912, by Arthur Rostron, was a steamship operated by the Cunard line. Traveling from New York to several docking points throughout the Mediterranean, her eventual destination was Croatia. She was 550 feet in length and was carrying approximately 750 passengers. She was located 58 miles away from the Titanic in the North Atlantic when she heard the Titanic’s CQD distress call and immediately rushed to the Titanic’s aid. Older than the Titanic by a decade, and smaller by several hundred feet, with only one funnel to the Titanic’s four, the Carpathia’s customary speed was approximately 14 knots, but Rostron mustered her to 17 knots and reached the Titanic in three and a half hours. After Rostron and his crew rescued all survivors, the Carpathia carried them safely to the port of New York, arriving on Thursday, April 18, 1912, at Pier 54. On July 17, 1918, the Carpathia joined the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic. While transporting Canadian and American armed forces across the ocean during WWI, on her way from Liverpool to Boston, she was hit by three torpedoes fired by the German submarine U-55.

In April 1912, the Marconi wireless machine was a new, modern apparatus for wireless telegraphy. On board the Titanic, first-class passengers were granted the perk of using this service. Many of them took excessive advantage, sending scores of messages to friends and family—largely, it has been posited, with the aim of impressing others by contacting them while on the maiden voyage of the world’s most luxurious ship. The telegraph operators aboard the Titanic, like many during that period, were young men, and they were employed not by the White Star Line but by the Marconi company. This allegiance to the private company as opposed to the White Star Line may have contributed to the wireless operators’ habitually prioritizing frivolous, private passenger correspondence over the critical ice warnings being sent to the Titanic from neighboring ships. The Titanic maintained 24-hour contact and observation of their Marconi wires, with two operators, Jack Philips and Harold Bride, taking shifts sleeping in their cabin adjacent to the wireless room. The Marconi room was situated just down the hallway from the Captain’s quarters and the wheelhouse, for ease of relaying essential information to the ship’s officers.

Not all ships maintained 24-hour contact prior to the Titanic disaster, a reality that became a critical factor in the lack of response to the Titanic by the Californian, whose operator had gone to bed by the time Philips and Bride began to send CQD and then SOS messages out to surrounding vessels in search of help. When Walter Lord mentions Cape Race, he’s referring to the wireless station at the southeasternmost tip of Newfoundland, through which much of the wireless traffic in the Atlantic was funneled.

The largest and most impressive ocean liner in the world by the time she set sail from Southampton, England on April 10, 1912, the RMS Titanic was a testament to recent advancements in engineering, machinery, and architecture, bearing the nicknames, “The Unsinkable Ship,” and “The Millionaire’s Special.” Some first-class cabins cost “$4,350” for a single crossing, an approximate value of $133,000 in 21st-century currency for a five-day trip. The Titanic weighed 46,000 tons and was 883 feet long, 92.5 feet wide, and 60 feet deep. She ran on two triple-expansion eight-cylinder engines, with a maximum speed of approximately 24 knots. Like her sister ships, the Olympic and the Britannic, she was designed by Thomas Andrews of Harland & Wolff, built at their shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, and cost the White Star Line £7.5m to build. Like many steamships hailing from the UK, she bore the prefix RMS, which stood for Royal Mail Ship; while one of the most luxurious liners in the world, she was owned by the White Star Line, which earned revenue from not only passenger services but also transportation of mail and goods across the Atlantic. The Titanic survived only four days on the open ocean, sinking at 2:20am on April 15, 1912.

Much of what is unconfirmable about the Titanic’s only voyage stems from the absence of her ship’s log. Official protocol of the time required that when a ship was abandoned, especially when she was expected to sink, the official logbook would be carefully sealed against potential damage on the open sea and brought with the highest-ranking officer aboard the last lifeboat leaving her. Having been meticulously maintained by the ship’s Captain, this logbook would then serve as a testament to the events which took place over the course of the voyage, and previous voyages, and provide insight into the catalyst for the abandonment of the ship. However, the Titanic’s logbook was never located. Historians have suggested that Captain Smith may have taken steps to intentionally ensure that the ship’s log would never leave the ship and therefore not become part of the public record.