A Night to Remember

At just 10 miles away, the Californian was the vessel closest to the Titanic at the time that she struck the iceberg, but the wireless operator on the Californian had gone to bed for the night before the Titanic struck the iceberg and she issued her first CQD (a radio call signaling a vessel in distress that was a precursor to SOS). Officers on the deck could see the Titanic in the distance, and observed the multiple flares set off by the ship and the changes in her silhouette as she sunk, but didn’t summon their Marconi officer to attempt to contact her.

A Leyland liner, the Californian had the capacity for 47 passengers, but none were aboard on the night of April 14, 1912. When she finally arrived at the site where the Titanic had sunk, Captain Arthur Rostron of the Carpathia charged her with recovering bodies from the wreckage before heading for New York with the survivors.

The Carpathia, captained on the night of April 14, 1912, by Arthur Rostron, was a steamship operated by the Cunard line. Traveling from New York to several docking points throughout the Mediterranean, her eventual destination was Croatia. She was 550 feet in length and was carrying approximately 750 passengers.