In Hearings, Titanic’s Story Took Shape

On an April night 100 years ago, a ship of the Cunard lines called the R.M.S. Carpathia moved up the Hudson River in a ferocious rain, sailing past the line’s home berth at Pier 54, instead going north to Pier 59, near 18th Street.

Today, the pier is home to a golf driving range, a digital studio and a microbrewery. In 1912, it was the pier for ships of the White Star line.

The Carpathia stopped at Pier 59 to drop off White Star property: lifeboats from the R.M.S. Titanic, which it had collected from the North Atlantic three days earlier, when the Carpathia rescued 705 passengers and crew members. The lifeboats were all that was left of the unsinkable Titanic.

Then the Carpathia turned back to its own pier, 54, just south of 14th Street. Thousands of people had gathered to watch it come in and find relatives, or in the case of newspaper reporters, to find stories....