Home from the Sea: The Autobiography of Captain Rostron of the Carpathia, the Man Who Rescued the Titanic Survivors

by Arthur Rostron

‘Home from the Sea’ was first published in 1931, the year Arthur Rostron retired after more than forty years on the high seas. His autobiography had been eagerly awaited as Rostron had been captain of the ocean liner CARPATHIA and acted decisively on the night of 14/15 April 1912 racing to the rescue of the 705 survivors of the TITANIC disaster. Although he gave extensive witness evidence at the British and American enquiries it was in this book that he delivered the full story of his involvement in the rescue.
This new illustrated edition features many rare images of the rescue of the TITANIC survivors.

About the Author

Arthur Rostron was born in 1869 in Bolton. He sailed with the British Merchant Navy, the Royal Navy Reserve (serving in the First World War) and retired as a Commodore of the Cunard Line. He died on 4 November 1940 and was survived by his wife and four children.

Genres: Nonfiction

247 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1931

Reviews

[Avis Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

Home From The Sea by Arthur Rostron is a book every sailing buff should know. His memoir is filled with plenty of good anecdotes from his career, which started in 1887 when the author was a cadet on a clipper. Rostron says his first voyage was three months of horror, fighting ice-hardened sails in storms while soaked with rain, snow, or sleet until his fingernails were torn off and his hands were left raw and bleeding. Twice he fell, once from the rigging and another down a hatch, landing on his back both times, but he managed to avoid permanent injury. On another voyage, there had been a miscalculation in ordering food, and all the author had to eat for weeks were loaves made of cracked wheat, brick-hard once they cooled.

Another time, as Roston's ship was sailing around a harbor with a party of drunken ships' captains on board, and one of them nearly drove the vessel aground, only being stopped when Rostron dropped anchor. Rostron had to face an impromptu court of inquiry from the group and had to threaten them right back to save himself. Rostron witnessed fights in the rigging, and was once punched by an angry seaman hard enough to send him staggering back thirty feet, but the seaman lost when Rostron got serious with his fists.

After a few years, Rostron reluctantly went to work for Cunard. He felt that steamships weren't proper vessels if they lacked sails, but he was seduced by heated cabins and regular meals. He was rather shocked to discover Cunard's insistence on speed at all costs. In its early days, Cunard would run up bills of thousands of dollars in damages just to save a few hours, and only dropped the habit when it became too costly.

Another other eyebrow-raising episode in the author's book was the time the ship's carpenter overfilled the forward tank with seawater which sent it washing about, causing a panic among two thousand passengers who did everything from climbing the rigging to filling the lifeboats. In another incident that would likely be swept under the rug today, a set of Chinese laborers went on a ramage of looting and had to be quelled with rugby teamwork.

During World War I, Rostron transported over one hundred thousand troops, and he witnessed the bungled assault on Gallipoli. Six of Rostron's ships were sunk in the war--right after he had left them. Nor were these the only bizarre episodes in his career. Once, while keeping watch, he gave a warning to a junior officer to avoid a snag, only to end up with both himself and the other officer goggling at it like mad. Having no camera, Rostron drew furiously, and when his captain asked if he'd seen anything during watch, dutifully replied, "A sea serpent, sir." When asked if he'd been drinking, Rostron produced his drawings. There the matter lay, although Rostron did have the satisfaction of reading a newspaper account published by a man who claimed he had been attacked by a sea monster and lost his oars in fighting it off.

Rostron's sailing career contained two other episodes he describes as blatantly supernatural. When sailing into a totally fogbound harbor at night, instinct made him stop his ship's engines, and soon after he saw another vessel moving right across his bow. Instinct also prompted him to stop his ship in the foggy North Atlantic, only to see, like the developing of a photographic plate, the gradual appearance of an immense iceberg a thousand feet long and a hundred and fifty feet high, which he says was pretty to look at, but not so nice to plow into.

But there's one story which Rostron tells that everybody knows. It took place on April 15, 1912. Rostron was captain of Carpathia on the day the Titanic sank, and the author's vessel was the first to reach the survivors. His rescue of them is a fascinating read. Rostron was later knighted and made Commodore of the Cunard fleet.

Despite the lengthy review, I've still left out plenty of good stories from the book, and Rostron's memoir is highly recommended.

There's an oral history on Youtube of Rostron giving his account of the rescue, and listening to it inspired me to seek out his memoir. The link for it is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wbtc...

The book is available from the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet....

[Majajeon · Rating 4 out of 5]

boy he loved his ships, but so interesting!