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Nature15–18 April 1912

Carpathia’s rescue

Answering Titanic’s distress call, Cunard’s Carpathia raced through the ice, picked up some 710 survivors from the lifeboats early on 15 April 1912 and landed them in New York on the night of the 18th.

A Titanic lifeboat being hoisted aboard Carpathia, 15 April 1912
A Titanic lifeboat being hoisted aboard Carpathia, 15 April 1912

Unknown author Unknown author or not provided · Public domain · Source

Around midnight Carpathia’s wireless operator, on a voyage from New York to the Mediterranean, picked up Titanic’s distress call (CQD and SOS). Fifty-eight nautical miles away, Captain Arthur Rostron turned at once, shut off the heating to send every bit of steam to the engines, and ran through the ice faster than ever before. Californian, much closer, heard nothing — her operator had gone to bed.

Carpathia reached the first lifeboat at about 4 a.m. and by 8:30 had taken some 710 people from eighteen boats. On the rainy night of 18 April she landed them at Pier 54 in New York. Ships sent from Halifax, among them the Mackay-Bennett, recovered more than 300 bodies from the sea.

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States and rulers at the time
Great Britain
United States — President William Howard Taft
Places
Wreck of the Titanic, Pier 54, New York

People

  • Arthur Rostron1869 – 1940

    commander · Captain of Cunard’s Carpathia, who answered Titanic’s distress call, drove his ship through the ice and rescued some 700 survivors

Before and after

Earlier
1912 Titanic’s maiden voyage
Later
1914 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea

Themes that include this event

  • The Titanic1911 – 1985

    From the launch of the “unsinkable” ship to her maiden voyage, the iceberg, Carpathia’s rescue, the convention that changed the rules of the sea, and the wreck found on the Atlantic floor more than seventy years later