Captain of the Carpathia

The seafaring life of Titanic Hero Sir Arthur Henry Rostron

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Transatlantic Liners

The era of regular transatlantic passenger steamship service may be said to begin and end with the Cunard company, from the sailing of its first ship, Britannia, in 1840, to the retirement of the first Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth at the end of the 1960s.

By the time Arthur Rostron joined the company as a fourth officer in 1895, its principal British competitor was the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (est. 1868), better known as the White Star Line because of its house flag.

International competition during Rostron’s thirty-five years with Cunard included two German lines and one French firm: the Hamburg-American Line or HAPAG (Hamburg-Amerikanische Paketfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft, 1847) out of Hamburg; Norddeutscher Lloyd (1857), based in Bremen; and the French Line (Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, 1861), sailing from Le Havre.

Queen Mary

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.

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About the Author

AuthorEric Clements is professor of history at Southeast Missouri State University. The Atlantic liners were his earliest historical interest, an interest that led him to serve an enlistment in the U.S. Coast Guard and to write Captain of the Carpathia. His unpublished research projects include writing a history of the Second World War-era, U.S. Coast Guard cutter Mohawk for his master's thesis and two vessel histories for the "Historic American Engineering Record."

 

He is also the author of After the Boom in Tombstone and Jerome, Arizona: Decline in Western Resource Towns (University of Nevada Press, 2003, reissued 2014), and of numerous articles and book reviews about the history and historic preservation of the American West.

Around the Web

From CNN: Titanic Survivor's letter: 'Disgraceful' treatment after rescue (2015)

From Smithsonian: Why the Titanic Still Fascinates Us (2012)

From YouTube: Scenes from Capathia's arrival in New York, 18 April 1912 (2014)

From History Channel: 5 Things You May Not Know About Titanic's Rescue Ship (2012)

From NUMA: Wreck of the Carpathia, Titanic's Rescuer, Found (2000)

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