I’m overdue to keep a link to this great telling of one of my favorite stories: the RMS Carpathia rescuing surivors of the wreck of the Titanic. I’ve read this dozens of times and it makes me weepy every time.
If I ran a TV network, I would have someone tell the story as a ten-episode procedural called All Possible Speed portraying it as close to real time as possible.
Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.
Also: in case you didn’t already that the Starship Enterprise is a steamship, this story will make it unmistakable.
Adding a capture of Jessica Price’s telling of the tale on Bluesky:
So, I get that the real-life USS Enterprise was a bigass warship who was great for morale and all but I wanna know why we aren’t naming everything in sight after the RMS Carpathia. And why isn’t there a gd movie??? (Thread about a heroic ship.)
The Carpathia was part of the Cunard line. Once upon a time, they’d had the fastest passenger ocean liners on the high seas, but their rivals, like the White Star Line (e.g. the Titanic) and a German company had overtaken them.
So our story opens on a company just trying to stay afloat (heh) and avoid being acquired by the International Merchant Marine Co., the conglomerate that owned the White Star Line and was bankrolled by JP Morgan, and are therefore automatically suspect.
So here’s the Carpathia, not trying to be the fastest anymore, but built to be able to haul more cargo than usual for a ship of her size and type. Stockier than her half-sisters in the Ivernia class, more draft horse than thoroughbred.
Her keel was laid in 1901, and she was initially planned to carry 800 passengers, but by the time she was completed, that had increased to 1700. She was designed for immigrants, 2nd and 3rd class passengers who weren’t in a hurry.
Despite the focus being on carrying the masses rather than the first-class elite, she was designed to be comfortable and beautiful. The third-class accommodations were “extraordinarily generous.” The third-class dining room was paneled in carved oak and teak.
Second class had a “handsome library.” The dining saloon was decorated in cream and gold and mahagony with a stained glass dome.
When she first began her career, the Carpathia didn’t have first class. She gained a reputation for being comfortable and safe, even during rough weather, due to her construction, which was unusually wide, and the lack of vibration from her engines.
In other words, she might not get immigrants to their new home fast, but she got them there safely and comfortably. Her design was, above all, humane.
In 1904, her focus shifted to carrying Hungarian emigrants, and in 1905 part of the second class area was converted to first class, and some of the third-class accommodations were changed to dormitories to carry more passengers.
On the night of April 14, 1912, the wireless operator, Harold Cottam, was on the bridge, so he missed the first distress calls from the Titanic. His shift ended at midnight, but he kept listening, and received some messages intended for the Titanic, saying there were private messages for it.
Wanting to be helpful, he sent a message to the Titanic, saying Cape Cod had private traffic for them. He got back a distress message, saying they’d hit an iceberg and needed immediate assistance. He took the message to the bridge. They didn’t believe him.
So he woke up Captain Arthur Henry Rostron, who ordered the ship to turn around. While dressing, he sent for the chief engineer and told him to add another crew of stokers to the engine room. They shut off heat and hot water for the rest of the ship to make more steam for the engines.
When passengers found out what was happening, they threw their belongings overboard—remember, a lot of these people were immigrants, so they only had what they carried—to make her lighter. The captain ordered three doctors to wait in each of the three dining saloons to treat survivors.
And the Carpathia charged into the darkness and the minefield of icebergs to get to the Titanic’s side.
Her top safe speed was supposed to be 14 knots. She wasn’t designed to be the fastest.
She made 17 knots that night.
That’s engines on the edge of exploding.
She wasn’t designed to be the fastest. She was designed to carry humans well and safely.
She took on 712 survivors.
Her passengers came to the aid of the survivors, bringing them warm food and blankets and trying to comfort them.
In 1918, she was carrying passengers from Liverpool to Boston, when a German submarine shot a torpedo into her side, killing 5 of her crew and taking out her engines and comms.
She stayed up long enough for all the surviving passengers and crew to get to lifeboats.
She wasn’t the biggest or the fastest or the most expensive or the most luxurious.
She was just a ship who took care of her people, going faster than she was supposed to be able to go, through the dark and the cold and the icebergs, and kept them all safe, so they could save lives.
You can keep your big famous warships.