RMS Carpathia was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger steamship built by C. S. Swan & Hunter in their shipyard in Wallsend, England.
Carpathia made her maiden voyage in 1903 from Liverpool to Boston, and continued on this route before being transferred to Mediterranean service in 1904. In April 1912, she became famous for rescuing survivors of the rival White Star Line's RMS Titanic after it struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. Carpathia navigated the ice fields to arrive two hours after Titanic had sunk, and the crew rescued 712 survivors from the ship's lifeboats.
RMS Carpathia was sunk on 17 July 1918 during the First World War after being torpedoed three times by the German submarine U-55 off the southern Irish coast, with the loss of five crew members.
The name of the ship comes from the Central European mountain range, the Carpathians.
Around 1900, the Cunard Line faced stiff competition from the British White Star Line and the German lines Norddeutscher Lloyd (North German Lloyd) and Hamburg America Line (HAPAG). Cunard's largest liners as of 1898, RMS Campania and RMS Lucania, had a reputation for size and speed, both being of 12,950 gross register tons (GRT) and having held the "Blue Riband" for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. However, Norddeutscher Lloyd's new liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Große had taken the Blue Riband from them in 1897, while the White Star Line was planning to place a new 17,000-GRT liner, RMS Oceanic, into service. Cunard also upgraded its fleet during this time, ordering the construction of three new liners, SS Ivernia, Saxonia, and Carpathia.
Rather than attempting to fully regain prestige by spending the additional money necessary to order liners that were fast enough to win back the Blue Riband from the German Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse or large enough to rival Oceanic in size, Cunard tried to maximize their profitability in order to remain solvent enough to fend off any takeover attempts by the competing shipping conglomerate by the name of International Mercantile Marine Co.
The three new ships were not particularly fast, as they were designed for immigrant travellers, but provided significant cost savings in fuel economy. The three ships became both instruments and models through which Cunard was able to successfully compete with its larger rivals, most notably IMM's lead company, the White Star Line.
Carpathia was a modified design of the Ivernia-class ships, being approximately 40 feet (12 m) shorter than her "half-sisters". Like her predecessors, her design was based on a long hull, a low, well-balanced superstructure, and four masts fitted with cranes, allowing for effective handling of larger amounts of cargo than was customary on an ocean liner.
RMS Carpathia was constructed by C. S. Swan & Hunter at their shipyard in Wallsend, England for the Cunard Steamship Company, to operate between Liverpool and Boston alongside Ivernia and Saxonia. Her keel was laid down on 10 September 1901, and she was launched on 6 August 1902, when she was christened by Miss Watson, daughter of the vice-chairman of the Cunard line. She underwent her sea trials on a voyage from the River Tyne to the River Mersey between 22 and 25 April 1903.
At the time of her launch, she was described as being 558 ft (170 m) long, 64 ft 3 in (19.58 m) breadth, with a gross register tonnage of 12,900 tons. When Carpathia was finally completed, her gross register tonnage had increased to more than 13,500 tons. She was designed with four complete steel decks, a steel orlop deck in holds No. 1 and 2, and a bridge deck 290 ft. long for passengers, the saloon, and cabins, with a boat deck located right above the bridge deck. At the time she was launched, it was said that she was to be fitted for carrying 200 first-class and 600 third-class passengers and large quantities of frozen meat. When she was finally completed, her capacity had increased to about 1,700 passengers.
Despite being an intermediate liner designed mainly for second and third-class travellers, Carpathia's interior accommodations were still quite comfortable and set a standard for the era. The dining saloon was described as decorated in cream and gold, which "combine effectively with the rich upholstery and mahogany of the furniture, and old gold curtains screening the ports", and was capped by a stained-glass dome underneath an electrical fan for ventilation. The second-class accommodation also included a walnut-panelled smoking room located in the aft deckhouse and a handsome library at the forward end of the bridge (A) deck. After the 1905 renovation, these spaces would be converted to first-class accommodations. Third-class accommodations on Carpathia were extraordinarily generous for the time. The third-class dining saloon extended the full width of the ship and seated 300 passengers, with walls panelled in polished oak and teak dado. Third-class also included a smoking room and ladies' room located immediately forward of the dining saloon on the upper (C) deck, adjacent to the enclosed promenade (or open space) similar to the design on Ivernia and Saxonia. Officers were berthed in the forward deckhouse on the bridge (A) deck, above the second-class dining saloon, while the captain's quarters was located on the boat deck immediately below the ship's bridge.
Carpathia's lower decks were well-ventilated by means of deck ventilators, supplemented by electric fans. The ventilation systems were designed to force fresh air over coiled thermotanks, which could be fed with cool water during the summer or steam during the winter, thus heating and cooling the ship as conditions warranted. Although the ship was fully electrified with over 2,000 lamps, the ship still had backup oil lamps in the cabins when she entered service, in the event that an electrical outage were to occur.
Carpathia had seven single-ended boilers, fitted with the Howden forced draught system, working at 210 psi (1,400 kPa), which fed two independent sets of four-cylinder, four-crank, quadruple expansion engines, built by the Wallsend Slipway and Engineering Company, Ltd. of Wallsend, England with cylinders of: 26 in (0.66 m), 37 in (0.94 m), 53 in (1.3 m), and 76 in (1.9 m), with a stroke of 54 in (1.4 m). The engine power available allowed for an intended trial speed of 15.5 kn (17.8 mph; 28.7 km/h).
Carpathia made her maiden voyage on 5 May 1903 from Liverpool, England, to Boston, Massachusetts in the US, and ran services between New York City and Mediterranean ports, such as Gibraltar, Algiers, Genoa, Naples, Trieste and Fiume.
Although lacking the speed and grand luxury of express liners, and having no first-class accommodations until 1905, Carpathia quickly developed a reputation as a comfortable ship, particularly in rough weather, due to her relatively wide breadth to length ratio, the use of bilge keels, and the lack of vibration typically found in powerful engines. The ship became popular with both tourists and emigrants. During the summer season, Carpathia operated mainly between Liverpool and New York City, and in the winter, Carpathia travelled from New York City to the Mediterranean Basin.
After Cunard partnered with the Royal Hungarian Sea Navigation Company Adria in 1904, Carpathia was designated with the duty of transporting Hungarian emigrants. As a result, Carpathia was renovated in 1905, increasing its capacity from 1,700 passengers to 2,550 passengers. Mainly third-class small cabins were converted to large shared dormitory rooms while adding first-class accommodation to areas that were previously second-class. By 1912, her tonnage had grown to 13,600 and she had a capacity of 2,450 passengers, with 250 being first and second-class passengers, and 2,200 being third-class passengers. She had a crew in 1912 of about 300 members, including 6 officers. She carried 20 lifeboats.
Sinking of RMS Titanic and Carpathia's rescue of survivors
Carpathia departed from New York City on 11 April 1912 bound for Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia). At that moment on the ship were about 240 crew members, of which a quarter were Croatian sailors. She carried 128 passengers in first class, 50 in second class and 565 in third class. Among its passengers were the American painters Colin Campbell Cooper and his wife Emma, author Philip Mauro, journalists Lewis Palmer Skidmore and Carlos Fayette Hurd, with their wives Emily Vinton Skidmore and Katherine Cordell Hurd, Dr. Frank Hamlin Blackmarr who attended to the survivors and sent the first detailed reports about them, and Charles H. Marshall, whose three nieces were travelling onboard Titanic. Also on board were Hope Brown Chapin, honeymooning youngest daughter of the former Governor of Rhode Island, Russell Brown, Pittsburgh architect Charles M. Hutchison and his wife, Sue Eva Rule, the sister of Judge Virgil Rule of the St. Louis Court of Appeals, as well as Louis Mansfield Ogden with his wife Augusta Davies Ogden, a granddaughter of Alexander H. Rice.