THE VALUE OF THE WIRELESS--OTHER SHIPS ALTER THEIR COURSE--RESCUERS ON
THE WAY
"WE have struck an iceberg. Badly damaged. Rush aid."
Seaward and landward, J. G. Phillips, the Titanic's wireless man, had
hurled the appeal for help. By fits and starts--for the wireless was
working unevenly and blurringly--Phillips reached out to the world,
crying the Titanic's peril. A word or two, scattered phrases, now and
then a connected sentence, made up the message that sent a thrill of
apprehension for a thousand miles east, west and south of the doomed
liner.
The early despatches from St. John's, Cape Race, and Montreal, told
graphic tales of the race to reach the Titanic, the wireless appeals
for help, the interruption of the calls, then what appeared to be a
successful conclusion of the race when the Virginian was reported as
having reached the giant liner.
MANY LINES HEAR THE CALL
Other rushing liners besides the Virginian heard the call and became on
the instant something more than cargo carriers and passenger greyhounds.
The big Baltic, 200 miles to the eastward and westbound, turned again
to save life, as she did when her sister of the White Star fleet, the
Republic, was cut down in a fog in January, 1909. The Titanic's mate,
the Olympic, the mightiest of the seagoers save the Titanic herself,
turned in her tracks. All along the northern lane the miracle of the
wireless worked for the distressed and sinking White Star ship. The
Hamburg-American Cincinnati, the Parisian from Glasgow, the North
German Lloyd Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm, the Hamburg-American liners Prinz
Adelbert and Amerika, all heard the C. Q. D. and the rapid, condensed
explanation of what had happened.
VIRGINIAN IN DESPERATE HASTE
But the Virginian was nearest, barely 170 miles away, and was the first
to know of the Titanic's danger. She went about and headed under
forced draught for the spot indicated in one of the last of Phillips'
messages--latitude 41.46 N. and longitude 50.14 W. She is a fast
ship, the Allan liner, and her wireless has told the story of how she
stretched through the night to get up to the Titanic in time. There was
need for all the power of her engines and all the experience and skill
of her captain. The final fluttering Marconigrams that were released
from the Titanic made it certain that the great ship with 2340 souls
aboard was filling and in desperate peril.
Further out at sea was the Cunarder, Carpathia, which left New York
for the Mediterranean on April 13th. Round she went and plunged back
westward to take a hand in saving life. And the third steamship within
short sailing of the Titanic was the Allan liner Parisian away to the
eastward, on her way from Glasgow to Halifax.
While they sped in the night with all the drive that steam could give
them, the Titanic's call reached to Cape Race and the startled operator
there heard at midnight a message which quickly reached New York:
"Have struck an iceberg. We are badly damaged. Titanic latitude 41.46
N., 50.14 W."
Cape Race threw the appeal broadcast wherever his apparatus could carry.
Then for hours, while the world waited for a crumb of news as to the
safety of the great ship's people, not one thing more was known save
that she was drifting, broken and helpless and alone in the midst of a
waste of ice. And it was not until seventeen hours after the Titanic
had sunk that the words came out of the air as to her fate. There was a
confusion and tangle of messages--a jumble of rumors. Good tidings were
trodden upon by evil. And no man knew clearly what was taking place in
that stretch of waters where the giant icebergs were making a mock of
all that the world knew best in ship-building.
TITANIC SENT OUT NO MORE NEWS
It was at 12.17 A. M., while the Virginian was still plunging eastward,
that all communication from the Titanic ceased. The Virginian's
operator, with the Virginian's captain at his elbow, fed the air with
blue flashes in a desperate effort to know what was happening to the
crippled liner, but no message came back. The last word from the Titanic
was that she was sinking. Then the sparking became fainter. The call
was dying to nothing. The Virginian's operator labored over a blur of
signals. It was hopeless. So the Allan ship strove on, fearing that the
worst had happened.
It was this ominous silence that so alarmed the other vessels hurrying
to the Titanic and that caused so much suspense here.