Читать книгу Black Man on the Titanic - Serge Bile - Страница 21

RMS Carpathia carrying rescued Titanic passengers and Titanic’s lifeboats.

RMS Carpathia was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger steamship built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. On her maiden voyage in 1903, Carpathia traveled from Liverpool to Boston. In April 1912, Carpathia became famous for her role in the rescue efforts following the sinking of the Titanic, a dangerous rescue mission that involved traveling through treacherous ice fields. Carpathia arrived within two hours of the Titanic’s sinking and rescued 705 of its survivors from lifeboats. On July 17, 1918, RMS Carpathia sank off the southern coast of Ireland after being torpedoed by the German submarine SM U-55.

“Icebergs loomed up and fell astern and we never slackened. It was an anxious time with the Titanic’s fateful experience very close in our minds. There were 700 souls on Carpathia and those lives as well as the survivors of the Titanic herself depended on the sudden turn of the wheel.”

—Captain Arthur H. Rostron, Commander of Carpathia

“Then creeping over the edge of the sea we saw a single light and presently a second below it. It seemed almost too good to be true and I think everyone’s eyes were filled with tears, men’s as well as women’s. All around us we heard shouts and cheers.”

—Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor