carpathia was captained by captain rostron. captain rostron prepared for the worst. he had extra lookouts. he knew that titanic had encountered ice. and so he wanted to make sure that in his dash to the disaster scene, he didn't fall victim to the same fate. when the carpathia got the message, it was about 59 miles away. so captain rostron knew it's going to take me several hours to get there. but he didn't know how quickly the titanic was going to sink. all he could do was just go and hope. his first priority was to close the distance and then followed it up with all those other decisions that you had to make in a rescue situation. captain rostron said, "do not wake our passengers." i want you to wake up all of the extra stokers we have. put them stoking the fires. captain rostron actually cut the heating on hot water for his own passengers to make sure that all the steam power of his boilers went into the propellers in order to get there as fast as possible. he raced through the night. [music playing] and they're all coming? those who are still with us, yes. grandp

bill wormstedt: on the carpathia, captain rostron immediately ordered the ship to be turned around andrd the titanic. tad fitch: he knew it was a desperate race. bill wormstedt: all he could do was just go and hope, and they came to the rescue. [eerie music] there's a lot of conversation about why titanic didn't have enough lifeboats for everyone. don lynch: they were required to have 16 by law but they had four extra craig sopin: there were 20 lifeboats, so if we do the math-- don lynch: if they had filled all 20 lifeboats to capacity, they could have carried 1,100 people. but there were more than 2,200 people on the titanic. bill wormstedt: 712 people were saved, so there was a lot of empty spaces. greg daugherty: i believe that lifeboat drills were fairly common on ships in those days. the titanic didn't have one, unfortunately, but was supposed to have one on the 14th, which is the date that it hit the iceberg. for some reason it was called off. tad fitch: it was intended for the crew, and they might have mustered certain crew members on deck and made sure that they knew which life