Captain of the Carpathia

The seafaring life of Titanic Hero Sir Arthur Henry Rostron

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A Boy and the Sea

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How did a boy who lived in Bolton, England, almost 30 miles inland, develop a longing to go to sea? His family was in the cotton-bleaching business. Bolton was known for its bleach works and had little connection with the sea. Yet, Arthur Rostron knew by the age of six that he wanted to go to sea. We can only guess because Rostron did not mention how his interest developed when he wrote his memoires.

Non-Fictional Sea Stories

For over 300 years before Rostron’s birth, English ships had been embarking voyages of discovery and emigration. England still held Canada and other colonies in the Americas. Captain James Cook, had made several voyages to discover the eastern coast of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. HMS Beagle had carried the young Charles Darwin on a voyage that gave him world-changing ideas.

All of these stories appeared in newspapers and books and general conversation. Young Arthur would probably have heard of or even read many of these stories of the sea.

Fictional Sea Stories

There is always the Odyssey and the adventures of Odysseus to inspire a young boy learning Latin. Swift’s Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World. By Lemuel Gulliver, better known as Gulliver’s Travels, was published in 1726 and was popular from the start. Arthur probably did not read any of the stories of Sinbad the Sailor because they did not reach a wide English-reading audience until the late nineteenth century.

To really inspire a young man in the mid-nineteenth century there were the books of Frederick Marryat who invented the nautical fiction genre. Marryat was born in London in 1792. He tried to run off to join the Navy several times and finally, at fourteen, did so. His father, a member of Parliament, obtained a place for Frederick as a midshipman on board HMS Imperieuse.

Marryat had a distinguished naval career. Promoted to commander in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, he was assigned to take news of Napoleon’s death to England in 1821. Marryat also developed a flag signaling system known as Marryat’s Code.

He began writing novels while still in the navy, and the modest success of his first, The Naval Officer, lead him to resign his commission in November 1830. Marryat eventually published 26 books, most of them novels involving seafaring.

His novels were very successful and influenced writers such as C. S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian. Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, and Earnest Hemingway also admired his books. Set in the time of the Napoleonic Wars Marryat’s fiction involved young men working their way up into command.

His Influences

We don’t know which stories inspired Rostron, but many possibilities could have inspired a land-bound boy to want a career at sea.

Sir Arthur Rostron, Celebrity

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Sir Arthur Rostron cigarette card

Digital Collections, The New York Public Library

This tobacco card shows Sir Arthur Rostron. It is #28 in a series of 32 famous English ships and officers. While the card mentions that Rostron was captain of the Carpathia, there is no reference to the rescue of Titanic survivors.

Before People magazine, before cereal boxes, even before moving pictures, there were tobacco, cigarette, and trade cards. These cards provided people a way to see the world outside their own neighborhoods. Nineteenth-century newspapers carried few pictures and picture magazines were unknown.

These little cards carried images of the well-known beauties of the day, military heros, business magnates, baseball and cricket players. They also had pictures of places, animals, and plants from around the world. The cards provided a window to the world for people who would see very little during their lifetimes.

The cigarette cards (tobacco cards in the UK) were used as stiffeners in cigarette packs. In 1850s some enterprising soul figured out that they could be used for advertising. By issuing a series of cards on one topic and encouraging people to collect the whole set, cigarette companies could encourage people to buy their brand. Companies in other trades also issued cards. One side would carry a picture and the reverse would have some explanation of the picture and an advertisement for a company or brand.

The cards were issued up until World War II created a shortage of paper. By the end of the war, there were movies, newspapers carried pictures and there were magazines with lavish pictures of movie stars. There was no place for the cards except for collectors. The largest cigarette card collection in the world contains over two million cards. It was bequeathed to British Museum in 1995.

 

More Aquitania

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See a second collection of images of Aquitania, including a great view of her from astern in dry dock and several photos of her serving as a troop transport in both world wars.

The Beauty of the Aquitania

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This montage presents Cunard’s RMS Aquitania in colored postcards, emphasizing her magnificent interiors. Britain’s largest ship at her debut in the spring of 1914, the “Ship Beautiful” was famous for her elegant architecture. She also had a long and distinguished career, being the only great liner to sail through both world wars and demobilizations before her retirement in 1950. Rostron commanded her twice in 1927 in relief of her regular master, Sir James Charles.

The Berengaria

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See images of Rostron’s final command, which began her career as the German liner Imperator. The ship was seized by the Allies under the Treaty of Versailles and eventually assigned to Cunard as partial compensation for its wartime losses. Renamed Berengaria, she spent the 1920s as the largest liner in Cunard’s fleet, sailing between Southampton and New York. Rostron commanded Berengaria from his knighthood in July 1926 until his retirement from the sea in November 1930.

Saxonia

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View exterior and interior images of Saxonia (with a few of Carpathia mixed in) in postcards and photographs. Built in 1900, Saxonia and ships like her, including Carpathia, were typical mid-sized Cunard liners of that era—stalwarts of ten to fifteen thousand tons designed to carry mostly second-class and immigrant passengers and large quantities of cargo on the company’s North Atlantic and Mediterranean routes. Rostron sailed in both ships in their early years as a senior officer and commanded Ivernia in 1916 and Saxonia in 1917.

Queen Mary

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First comes the launching, followed by the fitting out and the maiden voyage, in this case of Queen Mary. Launched in 1934, with her initial voyage in 1936, her keel was laid two months after Rostron’s final voyage in November 1930. She was thus not of his era, but instead was Cunard’s decisive answer to a new generation of transatlantic challengers. However Rostron would have been all too familiar with the scenery, as well as the hazards, of her Hudson River arrival that appears at the end of this excerpt.

Pathe’s Titanic Footage

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This newsreel coverage of the Titanic disaster by Pathé uses footage of her sister ship Olympic, and shows Captain E. J. Smith dressed in his summer whites while commanding that ship the previous year. The images of Carpathia are stock footage as well. Rostron appears for eight seconds at the midpoint of the film wearing civilian clothing. The newsreel also accurately depicts some of Titanic’s surviving crew and the rush on White Star’s New York offices. Cunard’s 14th Street piers, wireless inventor Guglielmo Marconi, and MacKay Bennett, the cable ship sent to recover bodies from the disaster site, also make brief appearances.  

Scenes of the Carpathia

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See a montage of images, mostly exteriors, of RMS Carpathia. Rostron commanded the ship throughout 1912. He and his officers during the Titanic rescue appear in one photo, and another slightly blurred image shows Carpathia from astern, approaching New York, with some of Titanic’s lifeboats slung on her davits outboard of her own. The sequence also contains several images of Titanic survivors. The final photograph is of Carpathia sinking into the Atlantic in July 1918, the victim of three German torpedoes.