At 2:30AM, one of Carpathia’s lookouts reports a green light on the horizon, far off the port bow. Rostron’s hopes that Titanic is still afloat are dashed when the light disappears. Thinking it might be a signal flare, Rostron orders that rockets be fired every fifteen minutes. After an hour, he had almost lost all hope that anyone survived. Then one of his lookouts spots another green light. This one is definitely a signal flare, he is told. Carpathia pulls alongside the lifeboat, No. 2, and begins pulling passengers aboard. Rostron ordered the engines shut down as more lifeboats became visible, all rowing towards the Cunard liner. As day-break approached, numerous shapes could be made out. At first they appeared to be large sailing vessels. Other ships, some guessed, come to help in the rescue. But as the sun broke across the eastern horizon, it became all too clear what the shapes were…icebergs. A chilling reminder of the previous night's events. The sea was littered with icebergs, field ice and wreckage as the last of Titanic’s lifeboats reached the rescue ship. At 8:30AM, lifeboat No. 12, is picked up by Carpathia. Commander Lightoller is the last to board. By now Captain Rostron had already confirmed the worst; Titanic sank with over a thousand people aboard. The vacant expression and dark, sunken eyes of the men, women and children being brought aboard from the sea tell the sad story. No one can fathom the horrors they have witnessed. No one can believe that the unisinkable ship is gone.

     At about 8:50AM, the Leyland liner Californian arrives on the scene and offers assistance. At this same time, Bruce Ismay dispatches a particularly contrite message to the White Star Line’s New York offices; "Deeply regret advise you Titanic sank this morning after collision with iceberg, resulting in serious loss of life. Full particulars later." Ismay moved slowly and spoke in a whisper. To Captain Rostron, the chairman of the White Star appeared to be a broken man, overcome with the shock and grief of the tragedy. He left Ismay under the care of the chip's physician and tended to the other passengers. Ismay would remain locked in his cabin for the remainder of the voyage to New York, eating very little and speaking to no one. Rostron ordered that he not be disturbed. Carpathia’s engines start up again and she steams for New York. Many of her passengers are assisting in the relief effort. Many offer to share their staterooms with the survivors. Before leaving the area, two services were held; one a prayer of thanksgiving for the rescued, the other a funeral for those lost. As Carpathia steamed for New York, Rostron ordered the only messages sent out via wireless be passenger messages confirming survivors. He did not want unsubstantiated claims about the disaster being spread, but word of the disaster was already circling the globe. By the time Carpathia arrived in New York on April 18, speculation, rumor and confusion were running amok as those ashore sought answers from those at sea. Tensions mounted as word spread that Carpathia would soon be docking in New York with all of Titanic's surviving passengers. With Titanic's lifeboats hanging at her sides, Carpathia is greeted by more than 10,000 people at the Statue of Liberty and besieged by hordes of small boats carrying newspaper reporters as she steams into New York harbour. Carpathia outran them easily and proceeded to White Star’s piers where she drops Titanic’s lifeboats. Captain Rostron then proceeded to the Cunard piers where Carpathia docked and unloaded her precious cargo of Titanic survivors. For many of them, the nightmare was far from over.

     Initially, White Star stated that the ship had indeed struck an iceberg, but had only suffered minor damage and was being towed to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Then they said that Titanic had sunk but that all the passengers had been transferred to rescue ships. By the end of the day on April 15th, however, the truth was known. More than two-thirds of the people onboard had been lost; those saved were mostly women and children. When news of the disaster reached Washington, D.C., an investigation was immediately ordered by the U.S. Senate. Senator William Alden Smith of Michigan was the driving force behind the argument for a U.S. inquiry. After a unanimous vote by the Senate, Smith wasted no time in setting up the hearings. When Carpathia docked in New York, Smith and Senator Francis G. Newlands of Nevada were waiting on the pier with subpoenas for Ismay and the surviving crew members. It was Smith’s intention to keep Ismay from fleeing back to England. While the world held it’s breath and waited for answers, Titanic’s survivors began another chapter in the sad saga their lives had now been entangled in.

     The formal American inquiry into the Titanic disaster began at 10:30 the next morning at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. From the beginning, Senator Smith was in charge, running the inquiry as a one-man show. From the very start, Smith ignorance of shipping and seamanship in general was very obvious (at one point he asked what an iceberg is composed of), but he proceeded with conviction nonetheless. His first witness was Bruce Ismay. Smith grilled Ismay, asking him questions about Titanic’s speed, the revolutions her engines were making at the time of the collision, about the damage itself and other questions that Ismay could only have answered had he been in direct communication with the captain and his officers. Throughout his testimony, Ismay insisted that he was no different than any other passenger. Smith questioned Ismay’s leaving the ship in a lifeboat when so many other men died. He all but called Ismay a coward and it was very clear that he held the White Star chairman in disdain. Other key witnesses called were Commander Lightoller and Harold Bride. Lightoller testified that he had not left the ship, but that the ship had left him. He recounted his harrowing tale of having to make a swim for it as Titanic slipped into the sea and how he had made his way to the overturned collapsible boat that had saved him. He refused to criticize the actions of his fellow crew members and commended Captain Smith on his bravery and sense of duty, which in Lightoller’s mind was exemplified in the fact that he had gone down with the ship. Harold Bride, whose feet had been smashed and severely frostbitten, testified that he had received only one iceberg warning, from the Leyland liner Californian in the late afternoon of April 14th. He disavowed any knowledge of other ice warnings and furthermore any messages that may have been received but not sent to the bridge. He refused to speculate on messages that Jack Phillips may have received, stating that Phillips did not mention any ice warnings to him prior to the sinking.

     Under particular scrutiny was Captain Stanley Lord. His ship, Californian, was only 19 miles away from Titanic and by his own testimony and that of his crew, Captain Lord had actually seen Titanic steam up. The testimonies of Lord and his crew basically stated the same thing; that at about 11:30PM on the night of the disaster, a large steamer came up to the south of them. Attempts to contact the ship by morse lamp failed. Despite the fact that rockets were seen, no one interpreted them as distress rockets and no one bothered to wake Cyril Evans, the wireless operator on Californian who had retired for the night. Lord was harshly criticized for his inaction. Senator Smith concluded that Lord could have easily pulled his ship right alongside Titanic and saved everyone aboard. This notion had come under serious scrutiny recently and to this day the issue of Californian’s possible role in the rescue of Titanic passengers had not been fully resolved. I personally feel that Captain Lord's negligence was paramount to murder. How hard would it have been to simply wake the wireless operator and have him take five minutes out of his night to see what the rockets meant?

     The American inquiry called far more witnesses than the British inquiry held a few weeks later. Held in London, the British inquiry centered on White Star’s possible negligence regarding the manner in which Titanic was navigated the night of the disaster. Was the ship traveling too fast in water reported to be littered with ice and icebergs? Were the officers negligent in not slowing down despite numerous ice warnings? Another source of controversy was the extent to which the lifeboats were filled; or rather the extent to which they were not filled. Why was it that the total number of people saved was far less than the capacity of all the lifeboats? Were the steerage passengers held back and locked below decks to allow First and Second Class passengers to escape the ship? Although addressed heavily at the American hearings, the subject of how Third Class passengers were handled during the sinking was touched on only briefly by the British proceedings. When the hearings concluded, it was determined that Titanic’s collision with the iceberg, although avoidable, was not a direct result of any negligence on the part of Captain Smith or his crew. Both committees concluded that the iceberg collision had torn a gash in the hull over three hundred feet long and that despite testimony to the contrary, that the ship had gone down in one piece. The U.S. Senate’s final report on the disaster sited the lack of lifeboats for all onboard as the major element in the loss of so many lives. Furthermore, the final report commended Captain Rostron for his courageous effort to reach Titanic in time to save her passengers. In pushing his ship to it limits and dashing through treacherous waters, Rostron was a true hero. Captain Lord of Californian, on the other hand, was regarded as almost a villain. The US committee determined that Lord’s inaction on the night of the disaster may have indirectly resulted in the deaths of so many when Titanic sank. The recommendations made by the U.S. and British inquiries stated that all ships carry enough lifeboats for everyone aboard and that lifeboat drills be held regularly so that every person onboard was familiar with the evacuation procedure. Wireless operators were to be on duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Lookouts were to be better trained, be equipped with binoculars at all times. More watertight compartments were needed and large ships should have double hulls that extended up the sides of the ship. In April of 1913, the International Ice Patrol was formed to guard the sea lanes of the North Atlantic under the direction of the U.S. Coast Guard. It was imperative that the disaster of Titanic’s loss never be repeated.

     While the hearings were proceeding, White Star had contracted several ships to go out and recover bodies. In the weeks following the disaster, a total of 328 bodies are recovered, the last exactly one month after the sinking. Most are buried at sea. Few are positively identified; weeks floating the water does unspeakable things to already rotting flesh. As late as June, travelers on the North Atlantic occasionally see bodies floating in the ocean. The corpses, kept afloat by their cork vests, served as grim reminders of the tragedy. The search for bodies is called off on May 15th. Wreckage washed up on the beaches of Northern New England and Nova Scotia for months. Although several theories for locating and recovering the wreck are proposed, it becomes apparent to all that the technology to reach the depth at which the wreck lay at simply does not exist yet. Gradually Titanic fades from the headlines as Europe finds itself entangled in the first World War just two years later.

For some, however, the ship would never leave their hearts. Her legacy would live on forever. Humanity as a whole was forced to reevaluate itself. We were no longer masters of our domain. Nature had taught us a harsh lesson. Many lives had been lost, seemingly for no reason other than shortcuts that had been made to accommodate comfort and luxury and to save a few precious dollars. The scope of the tragedy was beyond comprehension. As for the mighty ship; she now laid on the ocean floor, her exact location unknown for 73 years…