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“Titanic has sunk,” he shouted to Stewart.
Stewart immediately raced back to the bridge with the news and woke Captain Lord.
Within minutes, Lord began to steer a course for Titanic’s last position.
The sun was above the horizon, and the temperature had warmed some.
Carpathia was a blur of activity, as more lifeboats arrived and the passengers were off-loaded. The passengers stumbled onto the deck in a daze. Most were dressed in a haphazard fashion — some in formal attire, others in everything from silk kimonos to velvet smoking jackets. Most were wearing hats, as was the fashion: the men in fedoras and bowlers with a sprinkling of tall top hats and a few snap-brim tweed caps; the women in a variety of headgear, from Russian fur caps to formal black boaters. The survivors’ shoes were a study in contrasts as well-an eclectic collection from silk opera slippers to rubber boots to polished black evening shoes to high-heeled pumps.
All the passengers were wet, and all were cold.
The passengers on Carpathia raided their trunks for dry clothes that were passed out by the crew. The kitchen kept vats of soup, coffee, and cocoa filled, along with large silver platters piled with sandwiches of ham, turkey, and roast beef, but few of the survivors could muster an appetite.
The shock, cold, and horror they had witnessed rendered many mute, their senses numb.
At 8:30 A.M., Lifeboat 12, the last still afloat, was secured and the survivors unloaded. Harold Bride, the brave wireless operator from Titanic, had stayed on his station until the last possible instant, radioing the distress calls to sea. Ordered into a lifeboat, he had survived the ordeal.
Crewmen from Carpathia pulled him from the last lifeboat as much dead as alive. As soon as he reached the deck, Bride collapsed. The surgeon on Carpathia would need to administer stimulants to revive him enough to tell his story.
Captain Rostron had the 705 survivors safely on board — now what would he do with them? The Olympic, Titanic’s sister ship, was drawing nearer. She radioed Carpathia and offered to take survivors on board.
“Absolutely not,” Rostron told Second Officer Dean. “Can you imagine the shock to the survivors if they saw a near mirror image of their sunken vessel come alongside and ask them to come aboard? These people have suffered enough.”
“What, then, Captain?” Dean asked.
“New York,” Rostron said quietly. “We turn around and take them home.”
“Very good, sir,” Dean said.
“But first have the clergy aboard come to the bridge,” Rostron said.
The sun was burning brightly over the scene of the disaster at 8:50 A.M.
After a brief multidenominational ceremony to honor the dead, there was nothing more Carpathia could do. Captain Rostron ordered a course set for New York City.
At full steam, Carpathia was four days away.
A crowd numbering ten thousand milled around the Battery in New York City as Carpathia steamed past the Statue of Liberty, carrying the Titanic survivors. Captain Rostron had no way of knowing how much the story of the sinking of the great liner had captivated the public’s attention.
“Look at the crowds,” Rostron said to Dean, who stood alongside him on the bridge.
“That’s the last thing the survivors need,” Dean said quietly. Rostron nodded. The last few days had given him an opportunity to observe some of the survivors firsthand. Most were still suffering from a deep shock. Captain Rostron had noted two distinct feelings. The first was surprise. Surprise at how quickly they had been thrown from a floating palace into a freezing hell. The second was grief, tinged with remorse. Grief that others had died; remorse that they had somehow survived.
“I want you to take charge of boarding at quarantine,” Rostron said to Dean, “and keep the reporters from boarding.”
“Yes, sir,” Dean said.
Rostron knew this was but a stopgap. Once Carpathia was moored along the White Star Pier on the East River and the survivors had disembarked, there was nothing he would be able to do to protect them from the hordes. Still, he wanted to give them as much time as possible to collect their thoughts.
UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN had fared better than most. Her hardscrabble existence in the mining camps of Colorado had given her an i
Spitting into the water alongside, she turned to a crewman nearby.
“From this day forward,” she said, “I shall always be defined by what happened.”
“What do you mean, Mrs. Brown?” the crewman asked.
“Whatever I do in the future will pale,” Brown said, “and when I die, the first sentence they write will be that I was a survivor of Titanic.”
“You and the others,” the crewman agreed.
“I wonder why I lived when others died?” Brown said.
“I think,” the crewman said quietly, “that that is a question only God can answer.”
At 8:37, Carpathia began unloading the Titanic’s lifeboats so she could moor. At 9:35 Thursday evening, she was finally tied fast, and the journey was at an end. Captain Rostron had done all he could. He and the entire crew of Carpathia had performed their jobs with honor.
“Lower the gangplank,” Rostron ordered.
Three minutes later, the first survivors struggled onto land. Not one of the survivors imagined their savior would meet a similar fate.
A pair of tugs began pushing Carpathia from the pier in Liverpool. July 15, 1918, was a typical summer day in Great Britain — it was raining. But it was not the type of rain that plagued the island in the North Sea in winter, spring, and fall. This sprinkle was a halfhearted affair, lacking purpose and strength. At first it came from the north, then switched directions from east to west. It ebbed and flowed like a dying tide, at times opening to pockets of sunlight and dry air.
Captain William Prothero stood on the bridge as the tugs pushed his ship from port.
The Great War that now enveloped Europe had begun nearly four years before, yet it was only some fifteen months since the United States had entered the conflict. The prowling German submarines had finally wrested the country from neutrality. The Lusitania had been sunk in 1915, scores of other ships since. At first the German submarines were an a
Captain Prothero was a stout man with a black mustache that perched on his upper lip like a bristle brush. Those who served under him found him to be a consummate professional, firm but fair. While Prothero believed in protocol, he was not without a sense of humor.
“I hear there’s a chance of rain later,” he said to his second officer, John Smyth.
“In England?” Smyth said, smiling. “In summer? I find that hard to believe.”
Prothero thanked a steward who entered the bridge with a silver pot of tea, then poured himself a cup and added milk and sugar. “Would you check with the wireless shack,” he said to Smyth, “and see if they have received the latest warnings?”