A Tale of Titania by Paul F. Johnston , Smithsonian Institution shows her standing in a sailor suit in front of her house, smiling and proudly holding her new gift in both hands. A few months later, she tucked her camera into her luggage for a Mediterranean cruise that her mother Florance had planned for them. In April 1912, Bernie and her mother traveled to New York and boarded a steamship bound for the Mediterranean. Cunard liner RMS Carpathia cleared Pier 54 in the Port ofNew York late Thursday on 11 April bound for Fiume, a Hungarian emigration port in present-day C roatia. The ship had barely worked up a full head of steam off C ape Cod, when her radio operator Harold Thomas Cottam received the famous Morse code distress signal from Titanic. Wireless radios were the very latest technology for ships in 1912. In fact, Harry Cottam was not an employee of the White Star Line, but worked for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. Carp athia's captainArthur H. Rostron promptly set a course for the Titanic. To m aximize his ship's steam power, he immediately shut down all heat and hot water to the staterooms and sped sixty miles at seventeen knots to the doomed liner's last
Bernie Palmer's photos of Titanic survivors aboard Carpathia "wearing borrowed clothes."
reported location. Carpathia arrived there at 3:30AM, just over an hour after the huge ship sank, only to find an empty sea. Shortly afterwards her lookouts spotted Titanic lifeboat #2, and by 9:00 the next morning Carpathia had rescued the last of about 705 of Titanic's 2,200 passengers
from the crowded lifeboats adrift in the frigid Atlantic waters. Some of the survivors came aboard Carpathia wearing the bulky, cork-filled life preservers that were standard at the time. Bernie Palmer began photographing the Titanic passengers on Carpathia's
Underwood & Underwood, the copyright holders for the teenager's photos, identified the facing couple (bottom) as Mr. and Mrs. George A. H arder of Brooklyn, New York, newlyweds aboard Titanic returning from their honeymoon. The woman with her back to the camera is M rs. Charles M . H ays, whose husband was president of the Grand Trunk Railway. He did not survive the shipwreck; Mrs. Hays and their two daughters were among the rescued. (bottom right) Chicago physician Frank Blackmarr saved this life vest from a Titanic survivor. Dr. Blackmarr was a p assenger aboard Carpathia; he assisted the Titanic's survivors, many of whom were suffering from hypothermia, shock, and exposure. Contemporary newspaper photos show a large pile ofthese life preservers on Carpath ia 's main deck. Dr. Blackmarr donated his souvenir to the Chicago Historical Society, which gave it to the Smithsonian in 1982.
SEA HISTORY 138, SPRJNG 2012
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