My thoughts are on many things as Genya powers the thrusters and we start to rise, pumping seawater out of the ballast tanks all the way as the outside pressure relents, bit by bit, during the two-hour ride to the surface. We’re elated with excitement because of our visit to this undersea museum, historic site and memorial, but we’re also reflective and somber. After years of studying Titanic, reading the history books and watching hours of video of other dives, this dive has put all the pieces together for me.
We reach the surface at 6:50 p.m. After thirty minutes of bobbing and rolling on the surface, we rise dripping, out of the sea to land on the deck of Keldysh. At 7:25—after nine hours and forty minutes inside Mir 2, we step out into the last light of day. It feels good to breathe in the sea air and watch the sun set over the North Atlantic.
This place is more than a memorial, more than a museum. It is a place that, like a battlefield, the pyramids of Egypt, or the Forum in Rome, is a reminder of humanity’s achievements and the price we often pay in our quest. Titanic should not be left to the salvagers, nor should it be surrendered entirely to the dark solitude of the deep. We must keep the stories and the lessons alive and ever present.
Back in St. John’s, I pack my bags for a flight home to Vancouver. There, I repack my bags and prepare for a return trip to the east coast of Canada. A new venture I’m involved in, a documentary television series called The Sea Hunters, has started what we hope will be a long-running series based on Clive Cussler’s best-seller of the same name. We will search the world’s oceans for famous shipwrecks. While I’ve been out exploring Titanic, some of the crew members of The Sea Hunters have been searching for Carpathia, the ship that rescued Titanic’s survivors.
CHAPTER SIX
CARPATHIA
Harold Thomas Cottam’s watch was long over, but the wireless operator of the Cunard liner Carpathia was still at his post, listening to the dot-dit-dot-dit Morse transmissions of other ships and the shore. Cottam’s late-night wakefulness was unusual, but he wanted to catch the latest news flashes from the station at Cape Race. As he reached down to unlace his boots, he suddenly stopped, stunned by the message coming in over the airwaves.
The news he heard changed his life — and probably saved those of more than 700 others. The White Star liner Titanic, bound to New York on her maiden voyage with 2,224 persons aboard, was calling for help.
As Cottam acknowledged the signal, Titanic’s wireless operator, John George “Jack” Phillips called back: “CQD — CQD — SOS — SOS — CQD — MGY. Come at once. We have struck a berg. It’s a CQD, old man. Position 41.46 N, 50.14 W” CQD was the wireless distress call, and SOS was the new call just introduced to replace it. MGY was Titanic’s call sign. There was no mistaking the news, as much as Cottam could scarcely believe his ears. The new and “practically unsinkable” Titanic was going down.
“Shall I tell my captain?” Cottam wired back.
“Yes, quick,” came the reply.
Racing to Carpathia’s bridge, Cottam blurted the news to First Officer Dean, who, without knocking, went straight into the cabin of Captain Arthur Rostron. In the 1958 classic movie A Night to Remember, the scene, as re-created, has Rostron yelling out, “What the devil!” and sitting up angrily in his bed, but Cottani’s quick explanation stops him from taking the wireless operator to task. In his memoirs, Rostron wrote: “I had but recently turned in and was not asleep, and drowsily I said to myself: ‘Who the dickens is this cheeky beggar coming into my cabin without knocking?’ Then the First Officer was blurting out the facts and you may be sure I was very soon doing all that was in the ship’s power to render the aid called for.”
Rostron, a seasoned master known to his peers as “the Electric Spark,” was both decisive and energetic. He did not hesitate now. Again, as A Night to Remember reconstructs the scene, he ordered: “Mr. Dean, turn the ship around — steer northwest. I’ll work out the course for you in a minute.” The film’s script matches the decisiveness of the captain’s published memoirs. Rostron recalled that he asked Cottam if he was sure it was Titanic calling. “Yes, sir.” “You are absolutely certain?” “Quite certain, sir.” “All right, tell him we are coming along as fast as we can.”
Carpathia was not the only ship to receive Titanic’s distress call, but she was the closest of them all. Still, she was 58 miles away. The 13,564-ton, 558-foot Carpathia was a ten-year-old veteran of Cunard’s fleet, three days out of New York with 750 passengers bound to Gibraltar and the Mediterranean. As Rostron worked out his position in relation to Titanic’s, he realized that at Carpathia’s top speed of 14 knots, it would take four hours to reach Titanic. That just wasn’t good enough. He knew that many people would not survive in the icy waters unless help arrived soon.
Rostron called for more speed. Every off-duty stoker was roused and sent into the boiler rooms to shovel coal into the furnaces. To squeeze every bit of steam out of the boilers and into the engines, Chief Engineer Johnston cut off the heat and hot water throughout the ship, and pushed his men and machines to the limit. Carpathia surged forward at 15, 16 and finally 17 knots, faster than she had ever gone.
As Carpathia raced northwest towards Titanic, Rostron was well aware that he was steaming into danger. Numerous warnings of ice from other ships and Titanic’s own collision with an iceberg made him wary. But he couldn’t slow down. Rostron posted extra lookouts, including Second Officer James Bisset, who stood in the open, the frigid wind blasting his face as he stared into the darkness. When Bisset looked back at the bridge, he saw his deeply religious captain, hat lifted, lips moving quietly in silent prayer.
Carpathia’s crew was at hard at work, clearing the ship’s dining saloons to receive Titanic’s passengers, gathering blankets, uncovering the lifeboats and running them out. Stewards manned each passageway to calm Carpathia’s passengers and keep them in their rooms, out of the way. The galley staff brewed coffee and made hot soup, while the ship’s doctors readied emergency supplies and stimulants in makeshift wards. The deck crew rigged lines, ladders and slings to bring survivors aboard.
Aboard Titanic, the end was fast approaching. At 1:45 a.m., Phillips called Cottam to plead, “Come as quickly as possible, old man; engine room filling up to the boilers.” The last boats had pulled away — many only half full — as a crowd of some fifteen hundred people raced towards the stern, which was rising out of the sea as Titanic’s bow went under.