RMS Carpathia

RMS Carpathia was built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson at their Newcastle upon Tyne, England shipyard. She was launched on August 6, 1902 and underwent her sea trials between April 22 and April 25, 1903. Carpathia displaced 8,600 long tons (8,700 t) and was 541 ft (165 m) long and 64 ft 6 in (19.66 m) breadth. Carpathia made her maiden voyage on May 5, 1903 from Liverpool, England, to Boston, USA, and ran services between New York City, Trieste, Fiume, and various Mediterranean ports. The RMS Carpathia became famous for rescuing the survivors of RMS Titanic after the ship hit an iceberg and sank on 15 April 1912. The Carpathia was sailing from New York City to Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia) on the night of Sunday, April 14, 1912. Among her passengers were the American painters Colin Campbell Cooper and his wife Emma, journalist Lewis P. Skidmore, photographer Dr. Francis H. Blackmarr, and Charles H. Marshall, whose three nieces were travelling aboard the Titanic. Carpathia's wireless operator, Harold Cottam, had missed previous messages from Titanic, as he was on the bridge at the time. He then received messages from Cape Race, Newfoundland, stating that they had private traffic for Titanic. He thought he would be helpful and at 12:11 am on April 15 sent a message to the Titanic stating that Cape Race had traffic for them. In reply he received Titanic's distress signal. Cottam awakened Captain Arthur Henry Rostron who immediately set a course at maximum speed 17 kn (20 mph) to Titanic's last known position, approximately 58 mi (93 km) away. Rostron ordered the ship's heating and hot water to be cut off in order to make as much steam as possible available for the engines. At 4:00 am, Carpathia arrived at the scene, after working her way through dangerous ice fields, and took on 705 survivors of the disaster from Titanic's lifeboats. Carpathia herself was torpedoed and sunk by an Imperial German Navy U-boat when it was being used as a troopship by the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War in the Atlantic on July 17, 1918.