Chris Pine, Of Course.

THISSS!

i'm AWARE this is a stupid hill to die on, but like. trope vs theme vs cliché vs motif vs archetype MATTERS. it matters to Me and i will die on this hill no matter how much others decide it's pointless. words mean things

I collected a bunch of "haha I don't have 2020 vision" "oh God not like that" posts

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

Sad but true

i dont get offended at white people jokes even though im white because: 

i can recognize white people as a whole have systemically oppressed POC in america, which is where i live 

most people when they make white people jokes only mean the shitty white people and i am not a shitty white person 

im not a pissbaby

{   f o r   s c i e n c e   }

@probably-drunk-madara

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     But, much to Madara’s disdain, Tobirama doe not care one bit for the condition Madara is in. He had seen Madara in various states of disarray, with his face messed up, bloody, with twisted arms, and then beyond. Strangely enough, he thinks the wild battle-rage type of a look fits Madara more than any proper look ever could. And this is coming from him without any other intentions in mind. Just that. A simple appreciation of one’s aesthetics. If it can even be called that.

    Yet, luckily, Tobirama’s appreciation for seeing Madara all beat up does not show that much on his face. That would be awkward. Instead, he looks almost tentative. Thoughtful. Carefully he presses his fingers to Madara’s nose, feeling along one of its sides.

    “It’s not broken. Merely fractured, probably. There is nothing necessarily to fix there. Just better get some painkillers and ice for it. As for the discolouration, well, buy yourself some make-up strong enough to cover it if you mind so much.”

    It really isn’t anything too tragic and Tobirama isn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved, so he settles on being somewhere in the middle, using his other hand which he places on Madara’s jaw to turn his face a bit to see his nose from a different angle just to make sure that there indeed is no bump or any visible damage besides the bruising and dried blood.

    Speaking of the blood, Tobirama moves aside to throw away the bloody tissues seeing as Madara no longer needs them - the nosebleed has long since ceased. All that remains are the dried bits. For that, Tobirama reaches into his messenger bag, digging around for a while before he finds what he’s been looking for.

    “Here, you might need this,” he then thrusts a small packet of wet tissues at Madara’s chest, holding it there until Madara decides to take them. Which he should unless he wants to risk Tobirama wrestling him into that too.

    “You are lucky,” Tobirama adds as an afterthought, Not that he would want to absolutely ruin Madara’s visage per se, but at least he doesn’t have to suffer the consequences and Madara is still the same old. Hawk nose or not. Tobirama prefers him this way and so does everyone else. Or at least he thinks so.

    “Stay here and clean yourself. I’ll run in and get the painkillers. If they see you, they will call he cops on us and I am not getting banned from a pharmacy of all places.”

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