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their passage, especially when fares could be as low as £7 for a Third Class berth: a clean bed, fresh linens, and soap each morning, and three meals a day.
    Her completion delayed by a strike at Swan & Hunter, the Carpathia finally passed her sea trials in April 1903, and left Liverpool on her maiden voyage on May 5, stopping first at Queenstown on her way to New York. Cunard created a schedule for the Carpathia which put her on the run between either Liverpool and New York, or Liverpool and Boston, during the summer months, while between November and May, she carried immigrants (mainly Italian and Hungarian) from Trieste and Fiume in the Adriatic to America. Though this schedule had been designed first and foremost to serve the immigrant trade, which was Cunard’s bread-and-butter in these years, it wasn’t long before the Mediterranean crossings began to enjoy a vogue among wealthy Americans on holiday. Soon Gibraltar, Genoa, and Naples (and sometimes Messina and Palermo) were added to the itinerary as ports of call.
    Inevitably, in an effort to capitalize on this new found popularity for the Mediterranean, Cunard sent the Carpathia back to Swan & Hunter in 1905, there to be refitted with entirely new accommodations. Cabins and public rooms for 100 First Class passengers were provided. Second Class accommodation remained at 200, while by converting some of the cargo space and making a minor reduction in cabin sizes, Third Class berthing was increased to 2,250 passengers. While she could still work her passage by carrying cargo, the Carpathia was now very much a passenger liner, and in a low-key way, one of Cunard’s most popular.
    While there would always be that segment of the traveling public which clamored for the thrill–-and sometimes discomfort–-of a six-day passage on Cunard’s new Blue Ribband speedsters, Lusitania and Mauretania , there were just as many who enjoyed the leisurely pace of a ten day crossing to Liverpool or fourteen days to Trieste aboard the Carpathia . By 1909 she had been placed on the Mediterranean run permanently, only returning to Liverpool at the end of each year for a refit. In January 1912, the Carpathia was given a new captain, the man with whom her name would forever be linked, even long after he had gone on to far greater and more glamorous commands.
    Arthur Henry Rostron was born in Astley Bridge, near Bolton, Lancashire, to James and Nancy Rostron in 1869. Educated at the Bolton School from 1882 to 1883, and then at the Astley Bridge High School, the young Rostron decided that he wanted to pursue a career at sea, and so joined the cadet school HMS Conway , in Liverpool, at the age of thirteen. After two years of training there, he was apprenticed to a Liverpool shipping firm bearing the imposing name of the Waverley Line of Messrs. Williamson, Milligan, and Co. Sailing first on an iron-hulled clipper ship, Cedric the Saxon , Rostron spent the next six years at sea, sailing to all parts of the world including the Americas, India, and Australia, gaining invaluable experience in practical seamanship while he studied for his various Mates’ examinations. By 1887 he was serving as Second Mate aboard the barque Red Gauntlet . Rostron would later remember that while he was aboard her he had his closest brush with death at sea, when the Red Gauntlet toppled over on her beam ends (literally lying on her side) during a storm off the south coast of New Zealand; the ship managed to recover and Rostron lived.
    In December 1894, at the relatively young age of twenty-five, he reached a major milestone in his professional career when he passed the examination for his Extra Master’s certificate. He promptly joined the Cunard Line in January 1895 and was given a position as fourth officer on the ocean liner RMS Umbria . Possession of both a Master’s and an Extra Master’s certificate was crucial to the ambitions of any young man aspiring to the command of a ship in the British Merchant