RMS Carpathia
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The RMS Carpathia was a passenger ship of the Cunard Line put into service in 1903 . It gained worldwide fame for its role in saving the survivors of the sinking of the Titanic .
During the First World War , the Carpathia sank on July 17, 1918 around 190 km west of Fastnet Rock after being hit by a torpedo from the German U- 55 submarine . Today the wreck is owned by the US corporation Premier Exhibitions Inc. , which also has exclusive rights to rescue the Titanic.
history
The ship was built by CS Swan & Hunter Ltd. on behalf of the Cunard Line . in Newcastle upon Tyne on 10 September 1901 laid Kiel . The launch took place on August 6, 1902, after the equipment of the ship began on May 5, 1903, the maiden voyage , which led from Liverpool via Queenstown to Boston . From November 1903 to May 1904 it was used on the Trieste - New York route, until it returned to the Liverpool – Queenstown – New York route in May 1904.
In 1905 the Carpathia was completely rebuilt. Before the renovation, it had a passenger capacity of 1,700 people in second and third class, afterwards it was 2,550 people in classes one to three. The third class had only a few cabins, and a large proportion of the passengers were accommodated in dormitories, as was the case before the renovation.
The Carpathia was henceforth used in the summer months on the North Atlantic route and in the winter months for trips from New York to the Mediterranean .
From 1909 to 1915 she was used exclusively for trips from New York to the Mediterranean.
In the years 1915 to 1917 the Carpathia drove again on the North Atlantic route from New York to Liverpool.
Titanic accident
On April 11, 1912, the Carpathia cast off with 743 passengers on board (128 first class, 50 second class, 565 third class) under the command of Captain Arthur Rostron from Pier 54 in New York. She had many wealthy Americans on board who wanted to spend the spring in the Mediterranean and was supposed to call at various ports there. These included the expressionist painter Colin Campbell Cooper with his wife Emma , the journalists Lewis P. Skidmore and Carlos F. Hurd, the marine photographer Francis H. Blackmarr, the lawyer and author Philip Mauro and Hope Brown Chapin, daughter of the former governor of Rhode Island , Russell Brown . Some passengers also had connections with passengers on the Titanic : Louis M. Ogden, Esq. , and his wife Augusta (a granddaughter of Alexander H. Rice ) were friends with the publisher Henry Harper and his wife, who were returning on the Titanic from an extended vacation in Egypt . Charles H. Marshall of New York had three nieces on the Titanic who were returning from a family funeral in England.
In the early morning of April 15, 1912, shortly before 00:30 a.m. on the Carpathia, the first radio- transmitted emergency signals from the Titanic were received. After the captain of the Carpathia , Arthur Rostron, was informed of this emergency call, he ordered full speed to be taken to the reported position of the damaged Titanic , despite the danger of drifting icebergs . A speed of 17 knots instead of the normal 14 knots was achieved, which was mainly due to the stokers who tirelessly shoveled coal into the boiler furnaces. In addition, the ship's heating was switched off in order to transfer all available steam to the drive. Numerous passengers, who noticed this and wanted to complain about the failed heating, were informed of the facts and helped with the preparatory measures for accepting the Titanic passengers. Around 4 a.m., a good one and a half hours after the sinking, the Carpathia was the first ship to reach the specified position and a short time later took the first survivors on board from the lifeboats.
On the evening of April 18, 1912, the Carpathia arrived in New York Harbor with the 705 survivors of the Titanic disaster, expected by thousands in Battery Park and at Cunard Pier. Some time later, the crew members of the Carpathia were celebrated as heroes in all the ports the ship went to.
Downfall
On July 17, 1918, the Carpathia was torpedoed as a supply ship in the First World War by the German submarine U 55 and sank within two and a half hours.
Five of the 223 people on board were killed in the sinking. The low number of victims was due, among other things, to the fact that the ship was traveling in a convoy so that the crew members could be picked up by the other ships.
The wreck
The location of the Carpathia wreck was initially given in 1999 as being west of Land's End at a depth of 200 meters. This site was assigned to the Hamburg-America Line after more detailed research on the Isis, which sank on November 8, 1936 . In the following year, the Carpathia site was identified and verified by the National Underwater and Marine Agency as west of the Fastnet rock .
The current owner of the wreck is the US stock corporation Premier Exhibitions Inc. , formerly RMS Titanic Inc. (traded on the US stock market under the stock ticker PRXIQ), which also owns the exclusive salvage rights to the Titanic and exhibits its found objects worldwide.
The company acquired ownership of the wreck in April 2000 for its own shares valued at $ 1,374,000 at the time. She plans to undertake a rescue operation to the Carpathia to lift objects. For this purpose, a joint venture was established in which the partner company acquired a 3% share in the wreck for US $ 500,000. This gives a current market valuation of the property in the wreck of over 16 million US dollars.
Web links
- Data on Carpathia, Cunard Line on the site of the Titanic Inquiry Project (English)
- Carpathia sunk; 5 of crew killed , article in The New York Times of July 20, 1918 (PDF, English)
Footnotes
- ↑ a b Carpathia (RMS); Wreck of the Carpathia, Titanic's Rescuer, Found , press releases at National Underwater and Marine Agency (English)
- ↑ a b UK Titanic rescue ship 'found' , article on BBC News from September 8, 1999 (English)
- ↑ Titanic Inquiry
- ↑ Carpathia sunk by U55 at uboat.net (English)
- ↑ The National Underwater and Marine Agency called in a press release notwithstanding U 47 as versenkendes submarine.
- ↑ Clive Cussler, James P. Delgado: Adventures of a Sea Hunter: In Search of Famous Shipwrecks . Douglas & McIntyre, 2004, ISBN 978-1-55365-071-3 , p. 85. (English)