We must now go back to the Marconi room on the upper deck where, ten
minutes after the collision, Captain Smith had left the operators with
orders to send out a call for assistance. From this Marconi room we get
a strange but vivid aspect of the situation; for Bride, the surviving
operator, who afterwards told the story so graphically to the _New York
Times_, practically never left the room until he left it to jump into
the sea, and his knowledge of what was going on was the vivid, partial
knowledge of a man who was closely occupied with his own duties and only
knew of other happenings in so far as they affected his own doings.
They had been working, you will remember, almost all of that Sunday at
locating and replacing a burnt-out terminal, and were both very tired.
Phillips was taking the night shift of duty, but he told Bride to go to
bed early and get up and relieve him as soon as he had had a little
sleep, as Phillips himself was quite worn out with his day's work. Bride
went to sleep in the cabin which opened into the operating-room.
He slept some time, and when he woke he heard Phillips still at work. He
could read the rhythmic buzzing sounds as easily as you or I can read
print. He could hear that Phillips was talking to Cape Race, sending
dull uninteresting traffic matter; and he was about to sink off to sleep
again when he remembered how tired Phillips must be, and decided that he
would get up and relieve him for a spell. He never felt the shock, or
saw anything, or had any other notification of anything unusual except
no doubt the ringing of the telegraph bells and cessation of the beat of
the engines. It was a few minutes afterwards that, as we have seen, the
Captain put his head in at the door and told them to get ready to send a
call, returning ten minutes later to tell them to send it.
The two operators were rather amused than otherwise at having to send
out the S.O.S.; it was a pleasant change from relaying traffic matter.
"We said lots of funny things to each other in the next few minutes,"
said Bride. Phillips went stolidly on, firmly hammering out his "S.O.S.,
S.O.S.," sometimes varying it with "C.Q.D." for the benefit of such
operators as might not be on the alert for the new call. For several
minutes there was no reply; then the whining voice at Phillips' ear
began to answer. Some one had heard. They had picked up the steamer
_Frankfurt_, and they gave her the position and told her that the
_Titanic_ had struck an iceberg and needed assistance. There was another
pause and, in their minds' eye, the wireless men could see the
_Frankfurt's_ operator miles and miles away across the dark night going
along from his cabin and rousing the _Frankfurt's_ Captain and giving
his message and coming back to the instrument, when again the whining
voice began asking for more news.
They were learning facts up here in the Marconi room. They knew that the
_Titanic_ was taking in water, and they knew that she was sinking by the
head; and what they knew they flashed out into the night for the benefit
of all who had ears to hear. They knew that there were many ships in
their vicinity; but they knew also that hardly any of them carried more
than one operator, and that even Marconi operators earning £4 a month
must go to bed and sleep sometimes, and that it was a mere chance if
their call was heard. But presently the Cunard liner _Carpathia_
answered and told them her position, from which it appeared that she was
about seventy miles away. The _Carpathia_, which was heading towards the
Mediterranean, told them she had altered her course and was heading full
steam to their assistance. The _Carpathia's_ voice was much fainter than
the _Frankfurt's_, from which Phillips assumed that the _Frankfurt_ was
the nearer ship; but there was a certain lack of promptitude on board
the _Frankfurt_ which made Phillips impatient. While he was still
sending out the call for help, after the _Frankfurt_ had answered it,
she interrupted him again, asking what was the matter. They told Captain
Smith, who said, "That fellow is a fool," an opinion which Phillips and
Bride not only shared, but which they even found time to communicate to
the operator on the _Frankfurt_. By this time the _Olympic_ had also
answered her twin sister's cry for help, but she was far away, more than
three hundred miles; and although she too turned and began to race
towards the spot where the _Titanic_ was lying so quietly, it was felt
that the honours of salving her passengers would go to the _Carpathia_.
The foolish _Frankfurt_ operator still occasionally interrupted with a
question, and he was finally told, with such brusqueness as the wireless
is capable of, to keep away from his instrument and not interfere with
the serious conversations of the _Titanic_ and _Carpathia_.
Then Bride took Phillips's place at the instrument and succeeded in
getting a whisper from the _Baltic_, and gradually, over hundreds of
miles of ocean, the invisible ether told the ships that their giant
sister was in distress. The time passed quickly with these urgent
conversations on which so much might depend, and hour by hour and minute
by minute the water was creeping up the steep sides of the ship. Once
the Captain looked in and told them that the engine-rooms were taking in
water and that the dynamos might not last much longer. That information
was also sent to the _Carpathia_, who by this time could tell them that
she had turned towards them with every furnace going at full blast, and
was hurrying forward at the rate of eighteen knots instead of her usual
fifteen. It now became a question how long the storage plant would
continue to supply current. Phillips went out on deck and looked round.
"The water was pretty close up to the boat deck. There was a great
scramble aft, and how poor Phillips worked through it I don't know. He
was a brave man. I learnt to love him that night, and I suddenly felt
for him a great reverence, to see him standing there sticking to his
work while everybody else was raging about. While I live I shall never
forget the work Phillips did for that last awful fifteen minutes."
Bride felt that it was time to look about and see if there was no chance
of saving himself. He knew that by this time all the boats had gone. He
could see, by looking over the side, that the water was far nearer than
it had yet been, and that the fo'c's'le decks, which of course were much
lower than the superstructure on which the Marconi cabin was situated,
were already awash. He remembered that there was a lifebelt for every
member of the crew and that his own was under his bunk; and he went and
put it on. And then, thinking how cold the water would be, he went back
and put his boots on, and an extra coat. Phillips was still standing at
the key, talking to the _Olympic_ now and telling her the tragic and
shameful news that her twin sister, the unsinkable, was sinking by the
head and was pretty near her end. While Phillips was sending this
message Bride strapped a lifebelt about him and put on his overcoat.
Then, at Phillips's suggestion, Bride went out to see if there was
anything left in the shape of a boat by which they could get away. He
saw some men struggling helplessly with a collapsible boat which they
were trying to lower down on to the deck. Bride gave them a hand and
then, although it was the last boat left, he resolutely turned his back
on it and went back to Phillips. At that moment for the last time, the
Captain looked in to give them their release.
"Men, you have done your full duty, you can do no more. Abandon your
cabin now; it is every man for himself; you look out for yourselves. I
release you. That's the way of it at this kind of time; every man for
himself."
Then happened one of the strangest incidents of that strange hour. I can
only give it in Bride's own words:
"Phillips clung on, sending, sending. He clung on for about ten minutes,
or maybe fifteen minutes, after the Captain released him. The water was
then coming into our cabin.
"While he worked something happened I hate to tell about. I was back in
my room getting Phillips's money for him, and as I looked out of the
door I saw a stoker, or somebody from below decks, leaning over Phillips
from behind. Phillips was too busy to notice what the man was doing, but
he was slipping the lifebelt off Phillips's back. He was a big man,
too.
"As you can see, I'm very small. I don't know what it was I got hold of,
but I remembered in a flash the way Phillips had clung on; how I had to
fix that lifebelt in place, because he was too busy to do it.
"I knew that man from below decks had his own lifebelt, and should have
known where to get it. I suddenly felt a passion not to let that man die
a decent sailor's death. I wished he might have stretched a rope or
walked a plank. I did my duty. I hope I finished him, but I don't know.
"We left him on the cabin floor of the wireless room, and he wasn't
moving."
Phillips left the cabin, running aft, and Bride never saw him alive
again. He himself came out and found the water covering the bridge and
coming aft over the boat deck.