Imagine any and all communication to the outside world just shutting down for the night like the corner liquor store, the internet’s switchboard operator pouring themselves a glass of bourbon and shutting the whole thing off. You can submit your e-mail request now, sure, but we probably won’t get to it until after breakfast, sorry. Harold Cottam, the wireless operator of the RMS Carpathia, the rescuer of Titanic, had all but turned in for the night on April 15, 1912, but decided to check on the night’s news broadcast being telegraphed from Cape Cod. He recounted the events for The New York Times a few days later.It was only a streak of luck that I got the message at all, for on the previous evening I had been up to 2:30 o’clock in the morning and the night before until 3 o’clock, and I had planned to get to bed early that night.
I thought I’d take some general news as I didn’t know how the coal strike in England was going, and I was interested in it. When I had been taking this some time there was a batch of messages coming through for the Titanic from the long-distance Marconi wireless station at Cape Cod, which transmits the day’s news at 10:30 New York time every evening.
When Cape Cod had been going some time he started sending a batch of messages for the Titanic, and having heard the Titanic man being pushed with work during the afternoon I’d thought I’d give him a hand by taking them and retransmitting them the following morning, as I had nothing much to work on.
As I was the nearest station to the Titanic, it was more or less my duty to retransmit them to him. When Cape Cod finished I made up my daily list of communications and reported them to the officer on watch. On returning to the cabin I put the telephones on to verify a time rush which I had exchanged with the Parisian earlier that afternoon. A “time rush” is the slang wireless word for the exchange of ship’s time, which is always made when you encounter another ship to see if your clocks agree.
I put the telephones on and called the Titanic and asked him if he was aware that a batch of messages were being transmitted for him via Cape Cod and his answer was:
“Come at once. We have struck a berg.”Carpathia “steamed with every ounce of speed in us in the direction given by the Titanic.” It still wasn’t until just before dawn when the rescue ship arrived at the scene of the sinking, finding 710 survivors in lifeboats. Titanic started with a total of 2,223 passengers and crew.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
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