The Story of the RMS Titanic - Part 10

About 45 miles away, the S.S. Carpathia steams full speed at 17knots to try and reach the Titanic and rescue the survivors. They do not know that the Titanic has already gone down and approximately 1500 people are now desperately swimming in the freezing water.

The lifeboats drift around the wreck site. They won't return to the people swimming in the water. The survivors in the boats are too scared that the people in the water will swamp the boats, even though many of the boats are less than half full. There seems to be no hope left for those who didn't find a lifeboat.

The screams and cries from those in the water die down after about 2-3 minutes. Fifth Officer Lowe begins to round up several lifeboats and begins to distribute his passengers, leaving a couple of crew members in with him. He discovers a man dressed as a woman.

After emptying his boat into the others, which shows just how much more room the lifeboats had, he heads back to the people in the water, hoping to find any survivors. When he arrives, there is very little movement. There is a horrible silence to where the hundreds of frozen bodies bob around in the water. Lowe manages to rescue 4 more people from the water, two of which die shortly after. Lowe also rescues the people who cling to the slowly sinking boat A before rejoining the other lifeboats. Most of the women in the lifeboats are now widows, but they will not realise this until the reach New York.

Finally, after hours of drifting around the sea in freezing conditions in uncovered lifeboats, at 4am, the S.S. Carpathia steams into the wreck site to find the lifeboats scattered around the sea. Lifeboat 2 is the first to be recovered.

To be continued...