Carpathian cleanup of Titanic mess

Nintey-nine years ago today, reality set in. Humans had not conquered nature as they were led to believe in the Gilded Age. Sure man could fly now, and make machines that quadrupled output and other things that a generation earlier could never have dreamed.

Money didn't matter. Opulance didn't matter. If you were rich or poor, first class or steerage, it didn't matter anymore. As I mentioned in my previous blog yesterday, I knew Dr. Maurice Hardgrove who was just a young boy travelling back to the US from a trip to Ireland, and was on the Carpathia. He was shooed to bed by some crewmen. When he would get up in the morning and go to the top deck, this is what he would have seen.

The kindness of people during a tragedy endured as always. People would bring blankets and even their own clothing to the shivvering survivors.

The finality set in once everyone was brought on board and the lifeboats made their way out of the cold ocean waters as well. An empty reminder of all who were lost just hours earlier.

It would be a somber three and a half day journey to New York. The smiles of children likely haunted the newly widowed, neither of whom would have any idea how different their world would be now.

Names were taken, wires sent to New York and England to update people as to the true story and consequence of the disaster.

On a dark and cold spring evening, the Carpathia arrived in NewYork with the survivors of the Titanic. This is not how it was imagined. This is not how it was supposed to be. This was the ship that was unsinkable! And yet, here, the survivors slowly made their way off, their eyes blurred from all of the flashbulbs going off the cameras.

The bitterest pill to swallow, the toughest to accept was the final reminder -- empty lifeboats with the word "Titanic" on the bow. Oddly enough, there were 13 that made it, carrying 705 survivors out of over 2,200 people.

It was then that the rest of the world learned something that the passengers of both the Titanic and Carpathia found out 99 years ago today, as much as humans create and progress, you cannot defeat or conquer nature.