2
Telegraphist CQD aka SOS
Harold Sydney Bride , Bride fixing life belt on Phillips, John George Phillips (died age 25)
I have been thinking of the Titanic this whole week, dreading the day of it's 100
th anniversary.
I wanted to share with you what I wrote in my diary on April 15 2012 about that dreadful day back in 1912.
PS in the () marks it will be info not stuff I wrote in my diary
Dear Diary,
Today I will not be writing about my life, I will be writing about so many other peoples lives.
I will be writing about a horrible disaster that happened 100 years ago today. The sinking of the "unsinkable"
RMS Titanic.
As warped as it may seem, I have always been interested by the Titanic. I always think "If only they did this..."
I think there are so many "if
only's" in this story. If only they hit the iceberg head on, that way they would have only have filled some of the water compartments and not all of them.
If only they had enough life boats and they started loading sooner.
(Titanic carried 20 lifeboats, enough for 1178 people. The existing Board of Trade required a passenger ship to provide lifeboat capacity for 1060 people.
Titanic's lifeboats were situated on the top deck. The boat was designed to carry 32 lifeboats but this number was reduced to 20 because it was felt that the deck would be too cluttered.
Lifeboat number 6 was designed to hold 65 people. It left with 40. (note from me) "
Ok that's 25 lives there that could have been saved. Also, between those 20 life boats they could have saved 1,178 people but there was only 706 survivors. That means there was at least room for give or take 472 more people between all the boats."
Many people were confused about where they should go after the order to launch the lifeboats had been given. There should have been a lifeboat drill on 14
th April, but the Captain cancelled it to allow people to go to church.
Many people believed that Titanic was not actually sinking but that the call to the lifeboats was actually a drill and stayed inside rather than venture out onto the freezing deck.
The inquiry was concerned that there was a delay of more than an hour between the time of impact and the launching of the first lifeboat - number 7. As a result there was not enough time to successfully launch all the lifeboats. Collapsible lifeboats A and B were not launched but floated away as the water washed over the ship. Collapsible B floated away upside down. People tried unsuccessfully to right it. 30 people survived the disaster by standing on the upturned boat.)
If only that mysterious ship on the horizon answered the
Titanic's distress signal...maybe less people would have died.
I have been thinking about the Titanic all night long and it is making me heart broken and sick.
Thinking of all the people desperately running from boat to boat trying to get a spot.
Thinking of all the men saying goodbye to their wives, mothers, sisters, and children as the boats lowered, knowing that they will never see them again.
Thinking of all the women seeing the husbands, fathers and sons perish as the ship sank.
Thinking of all the people who knew there were no boats left and they knew they were going to die.
Thinking of the 3rd class passengers and how their lives were valued differently then 1st or 2
nd class.
Thinking of all the BRAVE musicians who kept playing till the Titanic sank. They knew they had no hope but they helped by keeping others calm.
Thinking of the BRAVE men who stayed at their post trying to save as many lives as possible, the
cole men, the
CQD men who tried to get help.
(below are some story's about the 2
tec men who sent out the
CQD signals)
Phillips
(On returning to England in March 1912 he received his orders to travel to Belfast and join the Titanic. Some have stated that Jack was acquainted with the other Wireless operator Harold Bride before they sailed on the Titanic, but Bride himself confirmed that they had never met before this point.
The wireless was kept busy with commercial traffic after the Titanic sailed from Southampton 1 and the equipment was damaged as a result. Harold Bride estimated that 250 messages were transmitted in the run up to Sunday night. Jack was turning in for a long awaited rest when the collision came about, and was just about to go to sleep when Captain Smith arrived in the wireless cabin. Once Smith had issued the order to send for help Jack remained at his post sending out the both the CQD and the SOS signals, taking short breaks to go and observe the situation outside. He sent Harold Bride to and from the Captain with regular updates as to the progress of the Carpathia until shortly before the sinking when Smith visited the wireless room to release them from their duties.
Both operators left at the same time, Bride going forward to help with collapsible B, and Jack probably running aft. It is not known how Jack left the ship but one way or another he found himself clinging to the same collapsible as Bride and Second Officer Lightoller. Sources say he was conversing with the latter into the small hours about the various ships that could be on the way.
Conditions on the upturned raft were harsh and as Harold Bride stated Jack was being relieved two hours early at midnight because he was exhausted after a heavy day transmitting traffic and repairing equipment. Under the circumstances it proved too much and Jack Phillips died sometime before dawn.
Bride
When he signed onto the Titanic at Southampton on 9th April,1912, Bride gave his address as Bannisters Hotel (Southampton). As an employee of the Marconi company, he received monthly wages of £2 2s 6d.
Sharing the wireless equipment with John Phillips the two agreed that Phillips would take the 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift and Bride the 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. shift.
On the night of the sinking Bride relayed messages to and from Captain Smith on the bridge regarding the progress of the Carpathia and other ships in the vicinity, whilst Phillips worked the key:
"I was conscious of waking up and hearing Phillips sending to Cape Race. I read what he was sending. It was a traffic matter. I remembered how tired he was and got out of bed to relieve him. I didn't even feel the shock. I hardly knew it had happened until after the captain had come to us. There was no jolt whatsoever.
I was standing by Phillips telling him to go to bed when the captain put his head into the cabin.
'We've struck an iceberg,' the captain said, 'and I'm having an inspection made to tell what it has done for us. You better get ready to send out a call for assistance. But don't send it until I tell you.'
The captain went away and in ten minutes, I should estimate the time, he came back. We could hear a terrible confusion outside, but there was not the least thing to indicate that there was any trouble. The wireless was working perfectly.
'Send the call for assistance,' said the captain, barely putting his head in the door. 'What call should I send?' Phillips asked. 'The regulation international call for help. Just that.'
Then the captain was gone. Phillips began to send CQD He flashed away at it and we were joking while he did so. All of us made light of the disaster. We joked that way while he flashed signals for about five minutes. Then the captain came back.
'What are you sending?' he asked.
'CQD' Phillips replied.
The humour of the situation appealed to me. I cut in with a little remark that made us all laugh, including the captain.
'Send SOS,' I said. 'It's the new call, and it may be your last chance to send it.'
Phillips with a laugh changed the signal to SOS."
Both operators stayed at their post after their release, but were forced out onto the deck by the water surging into the wireless room:
"I noticed as I came back from one trip that they were putting off women and children in lifeboats. I noticed that the list forward was increasing. Phillips told me the wireless was growing weaker. The captain came and told us our engine rooms were taking water and that the dynamos might not last much longer. We sent that word to the Carpathia.
I went on deck and looked around. The water was pretty close up to the boat deck. There was a great scramble aft, and how poor Phillips continued to work through it I don't know. He was a brave man. I learned to love him that night and I suddenly felt a great reverence to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about. I will never live to forget the work of Phillips during the last awful fifteen minutes.
I looked out. The boat deck was awash. Phillips clung on sending and sending. He clung on for about ten minutes, or maybe fifteen minutes after the captain had released him. The water was then coming into our cabin.
While he worked something happened I hate to tell about. I was back at my room getting Phillips's money for him, and as I looked out 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. The man was slipping the life belt off Phillips's back."
Bride and Phillips managed to deter the stoker and left the wireless room and headed out to the boat deck:
"From aft came the tunes of the band. It was a ragtime tune, I don't know what... Phillips ran aft and that was the last I ever saw of him alive.
"I went to the place I had seen the collapsible boat on the boat deck, and to my surprise I saw the boat and the men still trying to push it off. I guess there wasn't a sailor in the crowd. They couldn't do it. I went up to them and was just lending a hand when a large wave came awash of the deck.
"The big wave carried the boat off. I had hold of an oarlock and I went off with it. The next I knew I was in the boat.
"But that was not all. I was in the boat and the boat was upside down and I was under it. And I remember I realised I was wet through, and that whatever happened I must not breathe, for I was underwater.
I knew I had to fight for it and I did. How I got out from under the boat I do not know, but I felt a breath of air at last...
I felt I simply had to get away from the ship. She was a beautiful sight then. Smoke and sparks were rushing out of her funnel. There must have been an explosion, but we heard none. We only saw the big stream of sparks. The ship was gradually turning on her nose, just like a duck does that goes down for a dive.
Bride recalled that he could hear the band playing right up to the end, but not ‘Nearer My God To Thee!": he recalled them playing ‘Autumn’. He also recollected that there was little suction when the ship went down. He was finally able to climb aboard the upturned hull of Collapsible B.
"There was just room for me to roll on the edge. I lay there not caring what happened. Somebody sat on my legs. They were wedged in between slats and were being wrenched. I had not the heart to ask the man to move. It was a terrible sight all around - men swimming and sinking. I lay where I was, letting the man wrench my feet out of shape. Others came near. Nobody gave them a hand. The bottom-up boat already had more men than it would hold and it was sinking."
Harold Bride had survived but but suffered from badly frozen and crushed feet, due to the effects of the cold and the position in which he was sitting on the collapsible’s hull. He described the rescue by the Carpathia:
"One man was dead. I passed him and went up the ladder, although my feet pained terribly. The dead man was Phillips. He had died on the raft from exposure and cold, I guess. He had been all in from work before the wreck came. He stood his ground until the crisis had passed, and then he collapsed, I guess. But I hardly thought that then. I didn't think much of anything. I tried the rope ladder. My feet pained terribly, but I got to the top and felt hands reaching out to me. The next I knew a woman was leaning over me in a cabin and I felt her hand waving back my hair and rubbing my face.")
These men and women are hero's!
But most of all when I think of this it gets to me. I think of the so many desperate screams and the sobbing of the women in the boats.
I wonder what I would have done...would I stay and help people, would I give my seat up to a mother and child or would I have jumped in the first boat I saw?
It truly scares me!
