RMS Carpathia, which had rescued survivors of the 1912 Titanic sinking, was sunk by a German U-boat with the loss of five crew.

RMS Carpathia was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger steamship built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson in their shipyard in Wallsend, England.

RMS Titanic sank on 15 April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean. The largest ocean liner in service at the time, Titanic was four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United States, with an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg at 23:40 on 14 April. She sank two hours and forty minutes later at 02:20 ship's time on 15 April, resulting in the deaths of up to 1,635 people, making it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.

U-boats are naval submarines operated by Germany, including during the First and Second World Wars. The term is an anglicized form of the German word U-Boot, a shortening of Unterseeboot. Austro-Hungarian Navy submarines were also known as U-boats.