Carpathia (Cunard Line)

[shipstamps]

Builder: Swan Hunter Ltd, Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.
Completed: February 1903.
Gross tonnage: 13603.
Dimensions: 558ft x 64ft. Depth 41ft.
Engines: Two four-cylinder quadruple expansion. Screws: Twin.
Watertight bulkheads: Eight.
Decks: Three.
Normal speed : 14 knots.
Passenger accommodation: 204 cabin and 1500 third class.
Maiden voyage: Liverpool–Queenstown-¬Boston on May 5, 1903.
Engaged in the Liverpool–Queenstown–New York run until March 5, 1904, when she entered into the Mediterranean trade from New York for a few voyages and also maintaining some voyages to New York from Liverpool.
By September 1905 she was scheduled almost entirely in the New York – Funchal – Gibraltar – Naples – Palermo –Messina–Trieste–Fiume service with occasional calls at the Azores and Lisbon.
Reallocated back to her original service from Liverpool to New York in July 1915.
The Carpathia attained great fame for herself and her master, Captain Rostron when she answered the White Star Liner Titanic's distress calls on April 14, 1912, after she had collided with an iceberg at 11.40pm off the banks of Newfoundland on her maiden voyage from Southamp¬ton to New York. The Titanic had reported she was sinking by the head when the Carpathia sailing for the Mediterranean picked up the SOS and altered her course and ran for the scene where she arrived at about 4am on the following morning. Carpathia rescued the remaining 705 survivors of the 2208 on board that fateful night when the Titanic went down at 2.20am in latitude 41 46', longitude 50 14'. The Carpathia herself met with a similar fate when she was hit by three torpedoes 170 miles from Bishop Rock on July 17, 1918. Five men were lost when the torpedoes struck, trapping them in the boiler room.
Bahamas SG MS1078.
North atlantic Passenger Liners since 1900 by Nicholas T Cairis

[Mrcarlo]

the ship CARPATHIA is represented on this sheet of Bahamas.

[ibiscus1]

You will note that across the foot of the stamp there is Morse Code which reads
CQD CQD SOS SOS CQD SOS
Unfortunately the designer of the stamp translated this wrongly as
CDQ CDQ SOS SOS CDQ SOS

‘CQD’ was standardised as a maritime distress call by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in 1904. ‘CQ’ had been used by British landline operators as a general call-up (“All stations attend”) for quite some time, so most shipboard operators were familiar with it. However, Guglielmo Marconi felt that it did not convey the proper sense of emergency, so he appended the letter ‘D’ to the call and required all Marconi-equipped stations (which included most ships and shore stations of the period) to use ‘CQD’ as a standardised distress signal. It has since been claimed that ‘CQD’ stands for “Come Quickly, Danger”, but it really was meant only to convey “All stations attend: Distress” from a Marconi station. ‘SOS’, on the other hand, does not stand for anything at all, especially not “Save Our Souls/Ship”. The signal was selected by the second International Radio Telegraphic Convention of 1906 as an international standard. ‘SOS’, was chosen based solely on its distinctive pattern of easily-recognisable sounds –
dit-dit-dit, dah-dah-dah, dit-dit-dit. . . . _ _ _ . . .
Titanic was not the first ship to use the ‘SOS’ call, as is popularly believed. She was, however, one of the first British vessels to use the signal. Even though ‘SOS’ was ratified as an international standard in 1908, The first recorded use of ‘SOS’ by an American vessel, the SS Arapahoe, occurred in 1909 and there were two or three further incidents where the signal was used between that time and April 1912. Despite some claims, there was no confusion among the receiving ships caused by Titanic's mixed use of ‘CQD’ and ‘SOS’.
Stewart Wilson, Ibiscus Banchory

[D. v. Nieuwenhuijzen]

CARPATHIA
(Bahamas 1996, $2,- StG.MS.1078; Liberia 2000, $30,- StG.?; Isle of Man 2012, £1,65, StG.?)

[aukepalmhof]

Hungary 2012 2x 800ft sg?, scott?
On the top right side of this miniature sheet is the CARPATHIA depict.

[aukepalmhof]

Mozambique 2011 16.00mt sg?, scott?

[ibiscus1]

The man shown on the stamp is the American impressionist painter Colin Campbell Cooper (1856 - 1937). He and his wife Emma were passengers on board RMS Carpathia when the transatlantic steamship arrived on the scene of the sunken RMS Titanic. Cooper and Emma assisted in the rescue of the survivors. Cooper created several paintings which document the events including the one shown on the stamp. The Coopers gave up their ship's cabin so some of the rescued would have berths to sleep in.

Ibiscus1

[ibiscus1]

Hungary issued the commemorative stamp in memory of the Titanic and Dr Arpad Lengyel ship's doctor on the Carpathis the ship which hurried to the aid of the Titanic The main motif on the stamp is Titanic heading towards the iceberg, while the stamp shows parts of the liner, with in the top right corner a portrait of the Doctor and the outline of RMS Carpathia,

Ibiscus1