RMS Carpathia
The rescue
By 12.25 Fourth Officer Boxhall had worked out the correct position, and another message was sent: “Come at once, we have struck a berg.” That message was heard by the Cunard steamer Carpathia, then 58 miles away and bound from New York to Liverpool.1 On receipt of the first distress message, Captain Arthur Henry Rostron turned Carpathia around and drove her at her highest speed, 17½ knots, toward Titanic.1
At 4 o’clock Rostron considered he was practically up to the position given; he stopped at 4.05 and picked up the first boat, No. 2, at 4.10. It was 8 a.m. before all the boats had been picked up.1 He picked up 13 lifeboats, two emergency boats and two collapsible boats, all taken on board Carpathia; the other boats were abandoned as damaged or useless.1 The inquiry also records that Carpathia took on board 712 persons, one of whom died shortly afterwards — which is how the official total saved comes to 711.1
The inquiry uses both 712 (people taken on board Carpathia, one of whom died shortly afterwards) and 711 (the official total saved). We use 711 for the official total, and explain the extra person.
The court recorded its “great admiration” of Captain Rostron’s conduct: “He did the very best that could be done.” Carpathia was a Cunard ship of 13,600 tons gross, on passage from New York to Liverpool, with some 740 passengers and 325 crew already on board. At about 2.40 a.m. Rostron saw a green flare from Boxhall in No. 2 boat, and from then until 4 a.m. he was altering course continually to avoid icebergs. The boats were scattered over four or five miles.
From the scene he saw very little wreckage: a few deck chairs, cork life belts, and only one body. He then turned back to New York with the people he had rescued, docking on 18 April, on Greenwich’s timeline.