We've read plenty of stories of the people aboard the Titanic when it sank on April 15, 1912. Let's have a perspective on that night from another ship, the Carpathia. The Carpathia was a much smaller ship traveling east to Liverpool that night. It had only one radio operator, Harold Cottam, and he was in the process of shutting down radio operations for the night -it was after midnight- but decided to go ahead and relay some messages from Cape Cod piling up for the Titanic. In reply, he got a distress signal. The "unsinkable" Titanic had struck an iceberg and was sinking.
Cottam and the first officer ran to wake Captain Arthur Rostron. The captain immediately ordered the Carpathia to change direction and head 58 miles to the northwest to aid the Titanic, at full speed. It would take four hours to get there. As the ship chugged along, the passengers slept and the crew prepared to take on survivors. Meanwhile, Rostron considered the dark night and the field of icebergs he was taking his ship toward. Read the story of the Carpathia, the ship that rescued 706 Titanic survivors, at Singular Discoveries. -via Strange Company