THE CALL FOR HELP HEARD
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 LINERS 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.
[Illustration: THE TITANIC
The largest and finest steamship in the world; on her maiden
voyage loaded with a human freight of over 2,300 souls, she
collided with a huge iceberg 600 miles southeast of Halifax, at
11.40 P. M., Sunday, April 14, 1912, and sank two and a half hours
later, carrying over 1,600 of her passengers and crew with her.]
[Illustration: LOWERING THE LIFE-BOATS FROM THE TITANIC
Fortunately the sea was calm on the night of the disaster, for
otherwise the loss of life might have been much greater in the
terrible descent of more than 60 feet from the boat deck to the
water. As it was, four of the life-boats were wrecked in
launching.]
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 shipbuilding.
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.