Photos show how the RMS Carpathia saved hundreds of Titanic passengers 114 years ago

The British passenger liner Titanic was operated by the White Star Line and was traveling from Southampton, England, to New York City. 

When the ship was about 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, the two lookouts, Fredrick Fleet and Reginald Lee, spotted the berg.

Fleet and Lee were contending with an unusually calm ocean. With no waves breaking at its base, the iceberg was difficult to spot. Their binoculars were also locked in a cabinet, so they were using their naked eyes to scan the dark water on the moonless night.

While the night was clear, the lookouts later said the berg, between 50 and 100 feet tall, suddenly loomed out of the haze. One weather researcher has suggested a local phenomenon known as sea smoke, steam rising from the water, could have obscured the enormous frozen object, The Guardian reported.

First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship's helmsmen to avoid the iceberg, but they couldn't turn in time. As the ship scraped the iceberg, it tore a hole in the side of the ship, rupturing at least five of the watertight compartments.

Thomas Andrews, the Titanic's designer, was on board and quickly realized the extent of the damage and alerted the captain. 

Within an hour, Captain Edward Smith ordered the lifeboats lowered into the water, the BBC reported in 2012. As the ship's bow continued to sink, the stern rose into the sky.

Shortly after 2 a.m., the Titanic's lights went out. Soon after, the ship broke into two pieces, and the bow sank beneath the waves. Then the stern followed suit, sending hundreds of crewmembers and passengers into the sea.

There were 20 lifeboats aboard the Titanic, more than the 16 required for a ship that size. However, the boats only had capacity for about half of the passengers and crew, 1,178 people, Smithsonian Magazine reported.

Women and children were the first passengers to climb into the lifeboats. Many boats were launched below capacity, either because the crew was afraid they would collapse if fully loaded or because they didn't want to spend valuable time coaxing passengers onto the boats, according to "Titanic: A Night Remembered." 

At first, passengers remained relatively calm as the Titanic sank, NPR reported. The mood changed as more people started arriving on the upper decks where the lifeboats were located, one survivor told the BBC in 1979. 

As they rowed away, some lifeboat passengers feared the suction created by the sinking ship would drag them under. Others feared desperate swimmers would swamp the boats.

Emily Borie Ryerson's lifeboat returned to pick up survivors, mostly crewmembers, she testified during a Senate inquiry into the event.

They "were so chilled and frozen already they could hardly move," she said. The water was 28 degrees Fahrenheit, according to "Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron," a National Geographic special about Cameron's 1997 movie.

When flares from the Titanic woke the captain, he assumed they were "company rockets," or signals passed between ships owned by the same company, not distress signals, the BBC reported.

Between 10 and 19 miles away, the Californian would have reached the Titanic much more quickly than the Carpathia, which was around 58 miles away, The New York Times reported.

The Californian had also messaged the Titanic earlier, warning of ice. However, by the time the Titanic had struck the iceberg, the Californian's wireless operators had retired for the night.

Harold Cottam, the Carpathia's 21-year-old wireless operator, had planned to go to sleep. First, though, he sent the Titanic a message to let them know he'd picked up transmissions meant for the luxury liner. 

"Come at once. We have struck a berg," Jack Phillips, the Titanic's wireless operator, responded. At 12:35 a.m., Cottam alerted Arthur Rostron, the captain of the transatlantic passenger liner, who threw on a dressing gown and headed his vessel toward the sinking ship, BBC News reported in 2013.   

"All this time, we were hearing the Titanic, sending her wireless out over the sea in a last call for help," Cottam told The New York Times in 1912. 

Another ship, the Olympic, also heard the distress calls but was over 500 miles away, The Irish Independent reported.

He stationed a doctor in each of the ship's three dining rooms, outfitting them with "restoratives and stimulants," per the US Senate's report on the disaster. The crew stocked the saloons with coffee, tea, soup, and blankets. 

When the survivors came aboard, the chief steward and pursers would record their names so they could start sending them by telegraph.    

The first lifeboat reached the Carpathia at 4:10 a.m. It took over four hours for the ship to pick up all of the survivors.

The Carpathia discovered four bodies in the sea and lifeboats, which crew members buried at sea, according to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. 

Captain Rostron ordered the nearby Californian to search the area for any additional survivors. 

"The people on the Carpathia received us with open arms and provided us with hot comforts, and acted as ministering angels," Titanic survivor Archibald Gracie later said. Many voluntarily gave up their beds to the rescued passengers, according to a 2017 article in "Voyage: Journal of the Titanic International Society 101."  

While the doctors treated people for sprains and bruises, one saw women and children crying as the search for other passengers was called off. 

Augusta Ogden offered coffee to two distraught women. "Go away," they said. "We have just seen our husbands drown."

The closest port was Halifax, Nova Scotia, but getting there required traveling through more ice. 

Rostron decided to return to New York, where the Titanic had been headed. 

From the start, there were rumors that the company withheld information about the disaster, The Washington Post reported in 1912.

Philip Franklin, who was in charge of White Star Line at the time, denied knowing about the Titanic striking an iceberg shortly after it happened, Smithsonian Magazine reported in 2015. 

During the next few days aboard the Carpathia, survivors, including Margaret Brown, who became known as the "Unsinkable Molly Brown" following the voyage, started a committee to help their fellow Titanic passengers. 

The self-described survivors' committee raised thousands of dollars to thank the crew of the Carpathia. Brown, Emma Bucknell, and Martha Stone created lists of basic necessities for the other survivors. 

They camped in a dining room for hours, listening to other passengers as they "poured out their grief and story of distress," Brown later wrote. 

Carlos Hurd, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was aboard the Carpathia when it raced to help the Titanic. He and his wife, Katherine, interviewed survivors and wrote down their stories. 

Rostron wouldn't allow him to use the telegraph during the trip back to New York, so he tossed his notes to his colleague aboard one of the boats, The Missoulian reported.

Other journalists shouted at passengers through megaphones, offering $50 or $100 for interviews, WNYC reported.

The ship had left from the same dock only seven days earlier. 

Families of passengers arrived hoping to be reunited with loved ones. Ambulances lined the streets waiting to tend to the survivors, per The New York Times.

The Carpathia had rescued over 700 people from the freezing waters of the Atlantic. 

Of the roughly 1,500 people who died aboard the Titanic, nearly 1,200 were crewmembers or third-class passengers. 

Six Chinese passengers survived the sinking, but they were immediately turned away under the Chinese Exclusion Act. Under the 1882 federal law, Chinese immigrants were barred from entering the US.

One of the men, Fang Lang, was found floating on a door, which may have inspired a famous scene in James Cameron's 1997 film. Some of the passengers returned to the United Kingdom after a brief stop in Cuba.

Before docking to let the passengers off, the ship stopped to drop off the lifeboats at the White Star Line's Pier 59, according to the Hudson River Maritime Museum. 

Practically overnight, passenger liners needed to have enough lifeboats for everyone on board, The New York Times reported.

Three ships dispatched from Halifax were able to retrieve over 300 bodies from the wreckage, or one in five victims, according to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. 

The first vessel sent to retrieve bodies, the Mackay-Bennett, ran out of embalming supplies — the ship didn't expect to find so many bodies in the water — forcing crew members to bury more people at sea than intended.

About half of the recovered bodies are buried in Halifax. Relatives claimed 59 bodies and returned them home. Most of the dead were crew members and third-class passengers who were trapped on lower decks, ABC News reported.

Rostron was reluctant to speak publicly about his role in the Titanic rescue, though he did write an autobiography, "Home from the Sea," detailing that fateful night.