Rescuing Titanic: A true story of quiet bravery in the North Atlantic (Hidden Histories)

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Captain Rostron was the next witness examined. He was called at this early stage because the Carpathia was being got ready to clear out again from New York to resume her voyage. His evidence was seamanlike and forthright, as was only to be expected from him, and did much to refute senseless rumours. To travel the distance of 1,222 miles from the Corner to Sandy Hook would require another 51 hours of elapsed time. Adding two and a half hours for the further westing to New York, this gain would be occupied in the slow-speed passage of the harbor channels and quarantine delays. She would therefore berth at New York at the earliest at 5 P.M. on Tuesday, April 16–an inconvenient time to arrive for publicity purposes. Moreover, a passage of six full days from Queenstown would evoke no paeans of praise for the "Wonder Ship" when the Mauretania was regularly making that passage in four-and-a-half days.

The disaster of the Titanic was due to a combination of exceptional circumstances, and not to any one factor for which any individual could be blamed. The calm sea and the absence of wind to whip a surf around the base of the berg made sighting unusually difficult; the ice had come further south than usual at that time of the year; finally, the berg was not isolated, but was part of an extensive field which greatly increased the mathematical chances of collision. Yet these were only some of the many exceptional elements that combined to produce the Titanic disaster... News-cables reported that many prominent people had booked passages in the Titanic for her maiden voyage. Among them were the multimillionaires, John Jacob Astor, Benjamin Guggenheim, George D. Widener, Isidor Straus, Joseph Bruce Ismay (Managing Director of the White Star Line), Colonel Washington Roebling (builder of the Brooklyn Bridge), Charles Melville Hays (President of the Grand Trunk Railway) and J.B. Thayer (President of the Pennsylvania Railroad)—some of the richest men in the world—and many others in the mere million-dollar class. The passenger lists of the Titanic having already been cabled from Southampton, emphasising the names of the multimillionaires and other celebrities on board, the first scrappy news received stunned New York with the prospect that so many people of national and international fame had perished.Rostron continued in command of the Carpathia for a year before transferring to the RMS Caronia (1904). Afterwards, from 1913 to 1914 he took command of the RMS Carmania (1905), RMS Campania, and RMS Lusitania. Rostron was captain of the RMS Aulania when the First World War began and the ship was requisitioned as a troopship, which Rostron continued to command. In 191 In 1887 Rostron joined the barque Red Gauntlet as a second mate. Soon after, he left the Waverley Line and joined the barque Camphill. He was commissioned a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) on 28 April 1893. [5] In December 1894 Rostron served on board the steamship Concord after which he passed the examinations for his extra master's certificate. When it came to launching the boats, if more boats and rafts had been provided, and if there had been boat drill, more lives would have been saved… The boat was labouring toward us. In her sternsheets stood a man wearing officer's cap and uniform, steering with the tiller. Only four other men were in the boat, each of them with an oar, but rowing feebly, as though they were inexperienced, and also utterly exhausted. Huddled in the boat were twenty-five women and ten children.

Somewhere in this sequence of events there was a delay, or there were cumulative delays, amounting to a loss of a fractional period of time, perhaps not more than one or two seconds, which would have been sufficient, at the liner's speed of 38 feet per second, to enable her to clear the obstruction or to reduce its impact to a minor glancing blow. Next day, Saturday, April 20, the Carpathia was cleared again out of New York, to resume her voyage, ten days behind schedule. The Cunard Company refused to accept any compensation from the White Star Line for this loss of schedule time and the expenses of the rescue. Mat: It’s rare to have information texts nominated in the Klaus Flugge Prize so it’s brilliant to find books breaking the mould with regard to genre as well as style and form. What were you hoping the pictures would bring to the story that perhaps the words could not? At each port of call on our run to the Mediterranean and Adriatic, Captain Rostron was feted and hailed as the hero of the Titanic. The facts had by that time become known authentically, and it was recognized that his fine seamanship had been responsible for saving many lives. The rumour had started several days before the Titanic left Southampton. Newspapers for months had been printing articles extolling her wonderful qualities, but, on the morning when she was due to leave Southampton, twenty-two men who had signed on in her crew were missing. At the last moment, thirteen others were signed on as substitutes. All members of the crew were British, and most of them had their homes in Southampton.

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The lists went on and on. These famous people and their womenfolk were the creme de la creme of America's upper-class society. Their names were household words in that period when wealth, social distinction, or intellectual and artistic achievements occupied the newspaper space that nowadays is given to film actors, sporting champions, and criminals. Rostron was highly praised for his efforts in both the American and the British inquiries into the disaster. [19] [20] [21] [22] Later life [ edit ] James Bisset recalls the night the RMS Carpathia came to the rescue of the Titanic's survivors.... [I]Titanica![/I] [I]Tue, 06 Jul 2021[/I] One evening when we were talking of this, the framed picture of the Lusitania, hanging on the wall of our sitting-room, where we were yarning and joking, suddenly fell to the floor with a crash of broken glass! It had been hanging there for five years, and the supporting wire had rusted through. We were both young enough to be a little shaken by the superstition that a falling picture presages death, but we passed it off with a jest, as there was no reason to suppose that the Lusitania was ill-fated.

With the breeze that had sprung up, the boat was on our windward side, and drifting toward us. It was not practicable to manoeuvre the Carpathia to windward of the boat, so that she could make fast on our lee side in the smoother water there, as correct seamanship required. A large iceberg was ahead of us, which would have made that manoeuvre difficult when time was the chief con­ sideration. If the boat had been well manned, she could have passed under our stem to the leeward side; but, as she drifted down toward us, the officer sang out, "I can't handle her very well. We have women and children and only one seaman."

Resolutions of sorrow were passed by innumerable organizations. Newspapers opened subscription funds for the relief of distressed survivors. The generous, emotional heart of America was touched, as seldom before or since. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle aptly summed up: "The heart of the nation throbs with grief for the bereft." Nautical joke: The passenger in the Bay of Biscay who boasted that he had eight meals a day—"Four down and four up…" The Captain of the Californian, sighting the Carpathia stopped ten miles to his southward, had got under way at 6 A.M., headed toward us, and, in two hours of cautious navigation among the icefloes and bergs, came near enough to us for handflag signalling at 8 A.M.

Rescuing Titanic by Flora Delargy is one of the six books on the shortlist for the 2022 Klaus Flugge Prize. Catty jokes: "She's a decided blonde–she only decided recently...." "She's a suicide blonde–dyed by her own hand." This was necessary to avoid confusion and delay at quarantine and the customs, and also to protect the survivors of the Titanic from being harassed. There was no panic. When the Titanic was in her death throes, everything that is admirable and superb in human nature came to the fore. This was what made the survivors, and everyone else in the Carpathia when the facts were known, feel dazed, in silent, bewildered reverence and humility, with a feeling of pride, too, that so many men, of so many different kinds, had responded to death's imminent threat with courage and dignity.The parcels contained gifts of books, bibles, jewellery, cigarette cases, pens, photographs, teapots, binoculars, and all kinds of things which the Captain already had, or did not need: but all the letters and gifts had to be answered in common courtesy—a task which occupied the Captain's spare time (when he had any) for many weeks thereafter. The White Star Line had also launched in 1909 two medium­-sized ships, the Laurentic and Megantic, of 14,000 tons. The Hamburg-Amerika Line in that year had launched two fine steamers, the Cleveland and the Cincinnati, each of 16,000 tons. Norddeutscher Lloyd in 1908 had put into service the Prinz Frederich Wilhelm and the Berlin, each of 17,000 tons, and in 1909 the George Washington, 25,000 tons—the first of the "big" German liners.