Without the tireless work of the RMS Titanic's two radio operators, the toll on that night 100 years ago would have been far worse. At the same time, had more effective communication procedures between ships been in force, the tragedy might have been averted.
The Titanic's sinking spurred the passage of legislation seeking to improve maritime communication, but as part of a larger bill that was the first to mandate the licensing of radio stations. That started the apportionment of the communications spectrum between different interests that continues to this day.
Radio Aspects of the Disaster
The Marconi companies, headed by radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, had provided two-way radio systems to send and receive Continental Morse code—and the personnel to operate them—to ocean liners since 1904. By 1912, Marconi held a dominant position in the fledgling wireless communications industry, a cutthroat business in which operators refused to relay messages originating with another company, and were known to actively interfere with each other's transmissions. But even accidental interference was often hard to avoid, as the spark-gap transmitters that Marconi had championed and which were widely adopted by government, commercial, and amateur operators had a bandwidth so wide that they were eventually outlawed when tunable continuous-wave transmitters with cleaner signals were developed.
The Titanic carried a 5-kilowatt spark-gap transmitter that operated at wavelengths of several hundred meters and had an effective range of up to about 400 miles in daytime and 2,000 miles at night under good conditions. The ship also carried a battery-powered emergency transmitter. A 4-wire antenna was strung between the ship's two masts. Assigned to the station were two Marconi operators, senior operator Jack Phillips, who turned 25 the day after the Titanic set sail, and 22-year-old junior operator Harold Bride. (Such was the domination of the Marconi brand that they were referred to as Marconi operators, and the radio room as the Marconi room.)
Titanic was one of only four ships in its day to carry two wireless operators, the others being its sister ship the Olympic, the (also-doomed) Lusitania, and the Mauretania. Only four ocean liners flying American flags had any radio personnel in 1912.
Although the radio was available to relay messages from the captain and officers to and from other ships, shore stations, and the Titanic's owners (the White Star Line), its primary intended use was to send telegrams for passengers, at the rate of 12 shillings and sixpence for the first 10 words, and 9 pence per word thereafter—a substantial sum, though easily affordable for the Titanic's more affluent passengers. The radio operators alternated shifts: six hours on, six hours off. The telegram service was much in demand, as the two operators sent and received some 250 telegrams in the 36 hours after the boat left Southampton.
Unheeded Ice Warnings
The night of April 13-14, the transmitter broke down, and the two operators spent much of the night fixing it. Over the course of the next day, Phillips and Bride received three ice warnings from other ships, indicating that icebergs and field ice lay in Titanic's path. The warnings were preceded by the letters MSG, indicating a personal message to the captain, who was required to acknowledge them. The operators passed these messages on to the bridge, but failed to deliver several other ice reports and at least one warning, received at 9:40 p.m. from the Mesaba, which told of heavy pack ice and large icebergs. At the time, Bride was off duty and asleep, and Phillips was working through heavy telegram traffic with the Marconi station at Cape Race, Newfoundland. The captain did alter the Titanic's course slightly southward in response to the warnings, but made no adjustment to speed.
At around 11 p.m., Phillips heard a loud transmission from the Californian, the source of a previous ice warning, saying that the ship was now surrounded by ice and that they had stopped for the night. This was a CQ, a general message to all ships, rather than a distress call. (CQ is still used by ham radio operators as a general call to any station that wants to answer.) Phillips, who was still trying to complete his telegram traffic, curtly brushed off the Californian's operator, Cyril Evans, telling him to shut up as he was trying to work Cape Race. (With spark-gap transmitters, it was hard not to swamp nearby signals, and the Californian was by then barely 20 miles away.)
Evans, the Californian's sole Marconi operator, had been on duty since 7 a.m., and he retired for the night by 11:30. About 20 minutes later the Titanic, much nearer the now radio-silent Californian, struck the iceberg with a glancing yet fatal blow. (At the Senate inquiry into the loss of the Titanic, Californian crewmembers later testified that as they were mired in the ice, they saw a ship on the horizon, which they tried to signal with a Morse lamp. The ship appeared to be listing, and that it fired flares. By 2 a.m., the ship was barely visible. It is unclear why the Californian didn't try to contact it via wireless.)
Pleas for Help
Phillips, still sending his telegrams, hardly noticed the impact with the iceberg. Bride had awoken and donned headphones, preparing to relieve Phillips. Soon Captain Smith stopped into the radio room, explained the situation and at 12:15 returned to ask Phillips to send a distress call. Phillips complied, sending "CQD MGY" several times, followed by the ship's position. MGY was the Titanic's call sign, and CQD was a general distress call; SOS had already been adopted by international convention but CQD was still widely used, and was the sole distress signal Marconi operators were permitted to use.
Several ships, including the Frankfurt and Mount Temple, heard the distress call. Though the Frankfurt's signal was relatively loud, its operator seemed unclear of the situation and requested more information. (Later Bride would testify that Phillips called the Frankfurt's operator a fool and told him to keep out. It's been suggested that this was because the Frankfurt operator worked for Telefunken, Marconi's chief competition, and the rivalry was so intense that it even extended to emergency communication.)
Ten minutes later the Carpathia, 58 miles away and unaware of Titanic's plight, called to say that Cape Cod had a batch of messages for the ship. They were told "Come at once. We have struck a berg. It's a CQD OM [[old man]]. Position 41.46N, 50.14W."
The Carpathia, as well as several other ships including the Mount Temple, Baltic, and Virginian, altered course to come to the Titanic's aid. Titanic continued sending distress calls. At 12:45, at the request of the captain, Phillips started adding SOS to his distress messages. Around 1:00, Titanic raised the Olympic, which despite being several hundred miles away changed course to meet her sister ship.
By 1:25, Titanic had started launching its lifeboats. At 1:45, Carpathia heard Titanic report that the engine rooms had filled with water. At 1:47, Captain Smith came to the radio room relieved both operators of duty, but they stayed on and kept sending CQDs until their equipment failed. The last transmission was sent at 2:17; it was abruptly cut off when the radio room lost power—just three minutes before (according to the official record) Titanic plunged nose-first into the depths. Although all the lifeboats had departed, Bride managed to get to an inflatable raft, which remained afloat although capsized. Bride survived the ordeal, but Phillips was lost, and his body was never recovered.
Around 4 a.m., the Carpathia finally reached the scene, and was able to rescue 705 people from 20 lifeboats. Before the Carpathia reached New York, Bride—who had suffered frostbitten feet and an ankle injury—was actually called into service to spell the ship's wireless operator, Harold Cottam, who had been on nonstop duty since the morning before the tragedy. Carpathia arrived in New York Harbor on the evening of April 18.
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