During the past month or two, we have been presenting a series of topics here in Wavescan on the tragic story of the unexpected sinking of the grand passenger liner Titanic while it was on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic in April 1912. In these previous topics, we have presented the story of the loss of the Titanic itself, as well as the story of several of the ships and land stations whose wireless facilities were involved in communicating the news of these events to a waiting audience in North America and beyond.
In our program today, the focus of international attention is transferred from the Titanic itself to the rescue ship Carpathia, together with its multitude of wireless messages directed to North America. We examine these matters; and each reference to time is given, not in Titanic time in the Atlantic, but rather in local time in New York City. New York time was 1:50 hours, that is 1 hour and 50 minutes, behind Titanic time.
The Titanic station MGY was in a lengthy routine wireless communication with Cape Race station MCE Newfoundland during mid evening Sunday April 14, 1912 at the time when the Titanic struck its disastrous iceberg. As is sometimes claimed, David Sarnoff, supposedly at the Wanamaker Store WHI New York, was not in communication with the Titanic during that time.
At 10:25 pm, the Titanic MGY sent its first CQD message at the order of Captain Edward Smith, stating that they had hit an iceberg, and that they were needing immediate assistance. This first distress call in Morse Code was heard by land based stations at Cape Race MCE and Cape Cod (Boston) MCC, as well as by the ships Mount Temple MLQ and La Provence MLP.
It is also possible that other Morse Code wireless stations elsewhere, now unknown, also heard that same tragic message. At that stage, wireless activity on the longwave and mediumwave bands, as they are now known, was generally quite quiet.
Just seven minutes later, the Carpathia MPA told the Titanic MGY, we are on our way; and they arrived 4½ hours later. By that time the Titanic had already sunk (2½ hours earlier), and now 1500 people were already tragically dead. However, the Carpathia was indeed still able to rescue 700 survivors.
From this time onwards, international attention was no longer focused upon the Titanic, but rather now upon the Carpathia. The flashings and thunderings of spark wireless transmitters aboard ship and on land produced an unmitigated chaos that had never before been witnessed in the radio spectrum.
Back in those days, wireless was still quite in its infancy, and among the multitude of problems encountered by wireless operators in the transfer of information from the Titanic-Carpathia situation to mainland North America were the following circumstances:-
* Acting upon the request of advice from ashore, Captain Arthur Rostron aboard the Carpathia MPA had directed his wireless operators not to provide newspaper personnel with specific information about the Titanic disaster, though they could give brief personal messages and information about rescued survivors now aboard the Carpathia.
* The two wireless operators aboard the Carpathia, 21 year old Harold Cottam and 22 year old Harold Bride from the Titanic, were massively overloaded with incoming and outgoing messages.
* The spark wireless transmitter at MPA aboard the Carpathia was only a low powered unit. At the time, Marconi spark wireless stations aboard ship were rated generally at 1½ kW (considered as low powered) or 5 kW (considered as high powered).
* Marconi wireless operators were directed by their company to communicate only with Marconi stations, and not with stations using other equipment, except in an emergency.
* Many spark transmitters were electronically untuned, though generally they were on air wideband according to the resonant tuning of the equipment and antenna system.
* QRM interference from stronger signals overpowered weaker signals making them unreadable.
* Atmospheric static QRN, especially from lightning and wind and water storms, interrupted the reception of wireless signals.
* Most wireless receivers back then were not much more than an unpowered simple (or perhaps complicated) crystal receiver, with wide band tuning. (The Titanic though utilized a recently developed magnetic receiver with a new Fleming valve detector, though that receiver was now at the bottom of the Atlantic.)
* Many ships acted as intermediate relay stations between the Carpathia and the land based stations in North America.
* Many land stations also were attempting to communicate with each other in an endeavor to obtain and provide the latest information.
* Many licensed (and unlicensed) amateur wireless stations were on the air, some acting courteously (and some maliciously) in an endeavor to spread the news.
* There were several versions of Morse Code in use at the time. The most widely used was the Continental (International) Morse Code which was an updated version of the original Vail-Morse Code. The American navy was still using a variety of Morse Code that was based upon the visual communication of information by maritime communication flags. Then too, there were additional Morse Code symbols that were in use for non-English elements in different languages, such as in German, French or Russian.
(AWS/Wavescan #NWS 536)