Titanic: Secrets Revealed - Part Three

Hosted by Bernard Hill, we look at the facts, mysteries, myths, and legends of the Titanic.

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• Titanic
• Secrets
• Revealed
• Bernard
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• Shipwreck
• Facts
• Mysteries
• Myths
• Legends

[galoon]

@KayBeeEee1983 Correction: the prefix was "MSG" meaning Master Service Gram.

[galoon]

@KayBeeEee1983 (con't) The thing here is that Evans hadn't preceded his message with the letters "MS" which stands for Master Service Message. That prefix means that this is navigation-related and the recipient HAS to pass it along to his captain. So without that prefix, Evans' message sounded to Phillips like mere operator-to-operator chitchat which was why he ignored it. With the MS prefix, Phillips would have been required to take it down and pass it to the Titanic's bridge.

[galoon]

@KayBeeEee1983 Yes. The incident you're referring to is the exchange between Titanic and Californian just before the collision. Cyril Evans, the Californian's operator, was ordered to warn Titanic that she'd stopped due to the ice. Evans wired "I say, Old Man, we're stopped and surrounded by ice." Phillips, feverishly dealing with a backlog of passenger messages due to the set breaking down earlier, replied "Shut up, shut up; I'm busy. I'm working Cape Race and you're jamming me." (con't)

[KayBeeEee1983]

@galoon Are you sure that wasn't before they hit the iceberg? I thought I remember hearing somewhere that something like that happened while the wireless operators were sending passenger messages.

[galoon]

@KayBeeEee1983 It must be remembered that at the time the Frankfurt replied, neither Phillips nor Bride realized the ship was really going to sink. So they didn't yet grasp the gravity of the situation. Believe it or not, they did care about company affiliation. The operators weren't employed by the shipping lines at the time; they were employed by the radio companies, which is also why passenger messages took precedence over navigational ones; amazing, but true. That changed after the Titanic.

[galoon]

@KayBeeEee1983 His question was actually "What is the matter with you?" meaning what's wrong with the ship. I'm not sure why it irritated Phillips, but it obviously did. At the US inquiry, Senator W.A. Smith asked Harold Bride, the Titanic's surviving operator "do you think the operator understood he was a fool?" Bride's reply was "No, I think we keyed it too fast for him." So these operators were encouraged by their employers to actively carry out this rivalry between wireless companies.

[KayBeeEee1983]

@galoon Why would the question "What's the matter?" irritate him? I doubt he would care what type of wireless the other ship was using when his own ship was sinking. None of that seems right.

[galoon]

@KayBeeEee1983 This was covered in the 1912 Senate inquiry into the disaster. All the testimony and transcripts of it are available online for free, I believe. Interestingly, the Titanic's sister ship RMS Olympic (also Marconi-equipped) asked an equally stupid question: "Are you steering southerly to meet us?" and Phillips politely replied "We are putting the women off in the boats." As it turned out, the Frankfurt was 170 miles away; too far to reach Titanic in time.

[galoon]

@KayBeeEee1983 The Frankfurt was the first ship to respond to Phillips' CQD. The Frankfurt's operator, after consulting his captain, keyed "What is the matter?" This irritated Phillips, who keyed back "YAAF" for "you are a fool." This may have been part of a known rivalry between Marconi and Telefunken, who built wireless sets for ships. If the Frankfurt operator had had a Marconi set like the Titanic, Phillips may not have given an insulting rebuke. Frankfurt was a Telefunken ship.

[galoon]

@RocketFisk Yes, going full ahead on the starboard engine and full astern on the port one, while keeping the helm hard over, may have averted the collision. Of course, Smith knew exactly where the ice field was and when he'd be in it. He mistakenly believed he'd be able to see any iceberg big enough to sink the ship in time to avoid it. I agree on the triple-screw design; there was nothing wrong with it, even though a 4-screw layout like the Mauretania's was indeed better.