But for survivors such as Madeleine Astor, Jack Thayer and Dorothy Gibson, and many others, the echoes of that night continued to reverberate throughout their lives, the memories refusing to die away. Witnesses said that after the ship went down, the sea was as calm as a millpond. Yet in many ways the Titanic is an ongoing narrative and today, as the 100th anniversary approaches, we remain as fascinated by the sinking and its aftermath as ever. It is at this point – when the Carpathia arrives in New York – that most accounts of the Titanic story end. The cannonade of flashes from photographers' lamps as we went into the street seemed a cruelly inappropriate thing." All the time the bells kept tolling, and outside there was a cold drizzle of rain. The quiet of the scene was broken by cries and sobs. Survivor Edith Rosenbaum, who later changed her name to Russell, recalled that as she stepped off the ship and on to the pier she saw "thousands of people there" but heard not a sound, only "an intense silence, a silence of death.
In the distance they could hear the mournful tolling of bells. The city was enveloped in fog, but as the liner drew closer, passengers could dimly make out the brilliantly lit skyscrapers of Manhattan. On Thursday 18 April, the "ship of widows" sailed into New York Harbor. "Through it all that quietness reigned," said Rostron, "as though the disaster were so great that it silenced human emotion." The Captain insisted his ship steam around the site of the disaster in the hope of finding more survivors, but there was nothing to be seen on the surface of the water except for what witnesses described as a slight brownish discoloration, fragments of wood, a scattering of straw, the cork from macerated lifebelts and the occasional deck chair. The Titanic survivors were still enveloped by shock Captain Rostron noted an atmosphere of stillness that accompanied them, many seemed to have been reduced to spectres by the experience. Over the course of the following four hours, lifeboat after lifeboat arrived at the Carpathia's side.
By 4am, the Carpathia approached the spot of the collision and, in order to attract the attention of the survivors, the crew launched a spectacular array of rockets and Roman candles. Within a few minutes, the captain of the Carpathia, Arthur Rostron, had altered his course and began steaming towards the site of the stricken liner 58 miles away. At 12:25am on 15 April 1912 the Cunard liner Carpathia received a message to say that a ship, the Titanic, had struck an iceberg and required immediate assistance.
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