Going down the Carpathia and Titanic rabbit hole again.
If you didn’t know, on the night the Titanic sank, it sent out many distress signals. One of the ships that received them was the RMS Carpathia.
The Carpathia was asleep. Her wireless operator, Harold Cottam, had ended his shift and shouldn’t have been listening in. Luckily, he was. He caught a message from Boston, MA stating there was traffic on the wireless for the Titanic. He decided to be helpful and reach out to tell them. He received a distress signal back, and rushed to tell the bridge. They were skeptical, and didn’t really believe him. This is the Titanic, you know? Largest ship, marketed as unsinkable, etc. He rushed the message to the captain since he wasn’t being taken seriously, and woke him up. The captain, Arthur Henry Rostron, after being convinced of its legitimacy, rushed to answer the call.
The Carpathia was 58.22 nautical miles away (107.82km), with a top speed of 14 knots. This put the expected time of arrival 4 hours out.
They arrived in three hours. The top speed reached was about 17 knots. They’d turned the heating and hot water off to make as much steam as possible, and doctors were set to wait for the influx of injured. He sent out a message to the Titanic, telling them they’d be there in 4 hours, and left the airways clear for her distress signals. Going faster than possible in the ship, and dodging the very same ice that had brought the Titanic to heel in the first place, they made it to the site of the Titanic after she had sunk, and saved as many as they could.
To put the speed and effort into perspective, the odds of them reaching the Titanic when they did is like a normal everyday sedan winning an f1 race. The engine was tearing itself apart. Fourteen knots was do or die, last resort speeds. The engineers were covering gauges and physically holding valves closed to keep the pressure needed.
Even the passengers assisted, handing out clothes, food, and warm drinks as the survivors were rescued. The Carpathia decided to bring the survivors to New York City, the original destination. They were speeding there at their original top speed of fourteen knots, and the Carpathia was never able to reach that speed again.
They knew they were going to fail. They knew that they wouldn’t make it in time. The fact that they pushed so hard for so long, nearly breaking the laws of physics to help other people in need has always been amazing to me. There’s something so incredibly remarkable about the sheer desperation they had to help those survivors.
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