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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.


Wavescan N534, May 19, 2019

The Titanic Story: The Carpathia to the Rescue

At 2:20 a.m. on Monday morning, April 15, 1912, the majestic passenger liner Titanic broke into two pieces and sank more than 2 miles down in the icy cold northern Atlantic Ocean, 450 miles south east of Newfoundland. Touted by some as unsinkable, the Titanic was indeed the world’s largest ship at that time at 882 feet long, though it has been superseded in more recent years by a score or more of larger ships. The largest ever was nearly twice as long as the Titanic; it was the Oil Tanker Seawise Giant that stretched 1504 feet long, back around the turn of the century.

During the darkness of the night, the Titanic slid against a large iceberg that tore and dented the underwater side of the ship, allowing unmeasurable tons of water to gorge into the lower levels of the ship. In the remaining life for the Titanic, little more than 2-1/2 hours, many passengers and crew were able to leave the ship for the precarious safety of the available lifeboats, though 1500 people did not survive.

Initially, the focus of attention was originally on the Titanic, with wireless messages in Continental (International) Morse Code flashing from ship to ship, and occasionally to nearby land stations in Newfoundland, Canada and the United States. Back then, all of these wireless signals were in various forms of thunderous spark gap transmissions from bulky transmitters with power ratings aboard ship no higher than 5 kW, and generally considerably less.

In addition, the glass enclosed radio valve or tube in 1912 was still in its very infancy, and not yet in mass production in factories. Thus the vast majority of wireless receivers back then were various designs of what we now call crystal set receivers, with only a limited capability of receiving distant signals. In addition, frequency tuning on both the spark transmitter and the crystal receiver were very wide band at the best, and thus interference from receivable wireless signals was notably atrocious.

After the grand Titanic sank so ingloriously, the focus of widespread wireless attention was then transferred from the Titanic itself to the ship nearby, the RMS Carpathia. At the time, the Carpathia was an estimated 67 miles distant from the Titanic, and it would take some 3-1/2 hours for them to reach the already stricken ship.

The Carpathia was launched from her shipyards at Newcastle on Tyne, along the north east coast of England, in 1902. This ship could carry up to 1700 passengers, with an additional cargo of general goods and frozen meat.

At the time of the Titanic tragedy, the Carpathia had left New York four days earlier and it was bound for the Mediterranean with 740 passengers aboard. She was traveling well south of the dangerous 60 mile long icefield in the Northern Atlantic; and in fact, the Carpathia had already passed the Titanic, though more than 50 miles had separated the two ships at their nearest point.

At 12:11 a.m. (North Atlantic time in the area of the Titanic disaster), Wireless Operator Harold Cottam on board the Carpathia heard a Morse Code message from station CC at Cape Cod, southeast of Boston. This message stated that Cape Cod was holding several personal messages for passengers aboard the Titanic.

In an endeavor to be helpful, 21 year old Wireless Operator Harold Cottam at station MPA aboard the Carpathia transmitted a message to 25 year old Senior Wireless Operator Jack Phillips at station MGY aboard the Titanic, alerting him to the stack of wireless messages awaiting transmission to the Titanic.

In response, the Titanic tapped out the Morse Code letters CQD, indicating a message of distress to any who were listening, and stating that the ship had struck an iceberg. Cottam quickly ran to the bridge on the Carpathia with this message of disaster, but the officers on duty during that night were skeptical about the seriousness of this distress call. Instead, Cottam then ran just as quickly to the accommodation of the ship’s captain and awoke him.

Captain Arthur Rostron immediately ordered the ship to turn, and under full steam, to head to the Titanic’s location. Arrangements were quickly made also for the Carpathia to make adequate preparation to take aboard a large number of Titanic survivors. At this stage, Cottam informed the Titanic that they were on their way as rapidly as possible, and then he maintained a period of wireless silence in order for the Titanic to communicate with other ship and land stations about their perilous situation.

The Carpathia arrived at the edge of the icefield at 4:00 a.m., finding it was now necessary to slow down and dodge icebergs and growlers. The Carpathia arrived at the scene of the Titanic disaster in the icefield around daylight, but the Titanic had already disappeared 2-1/2 hours earlier.

For the next 4-1/2 hours they transferred survivors from the lifeboats up to the Carpathia, and they also cruised around the area looking for other survivors who might have been clinging on to floatable debris. From this time onwards, the Carpathia became the center of international wireless traffic associated with the Titanic tragedy.

Landbased wireless stations along the Atlantic coastline of North America and upon nearby islands bombarded ships in the North Atlantic in an attempt to obtain accurate information about the Titanic and its survivors. And then too, wireless operators aboard ships in the North Atlantic acted as relay stations in passing on whatever information they had obtained from other ships in the area.

Aboard the Carpathia, Harold Cottam at MPA was besieged with wireless messages seeking reliable information, and he was assisted by the injured Harold Bride, the 22 year old Assistant Wireless Operator at MGY on the Titanic. Bride had been washed off the sinking Titanic and was rescued into a lifeboat.

Captain Arthur Rostron ordered the two Harolds, Cottam and Bride at station MPA, not to report out any specific details to newspaper enquiries about the sinking of the Titanic, but they could only send mainly the names of known survivors. This information was also retransmitted by other ships to land based shore stations. They also wirelessed Titanic information to station MKC aboard the Titanic sister ship Olympic.

At the time, two Scout Cruisers, the USS Chester with wireless station NDG, and USS Salem with wireless station NRZ, were on a routine cruise off the American coastline, and naval headquarters in Washington, D.C. ordered them both to reach the incoming Carpathia and to escort it into New York Harbor. The Chester picked up some of the information in Morse Code from the Carpathia, and they relayed this information to the shore stations with their more powerful transmitter.

The Cunard Liner RMS Carpathia arrived at Pier 34 in New York Harbor at 9:25 p.m. on Thursday evening, April 18, at the end of its 3-day ordeal, and it slowly disgorged its 705 survivors from the Titanic, and its own 740 passengers, many of whom returned to the ship a few days later to begin again their interrupted voyage to Europe.

More about the Titanic wireless scene in 2 weeks.