Harold is woken by a deafening noise he cannot make sense of. He joins Jack in the cabin, but like nearly everyone on board, they do not grasp what has just happened.
Captain Edward Smith tells them to send a CQD5. This code, invented by the Marconi company, is the first known distress call. It roughly means “all stations: distress”. Then Harold changes the signal.
Send SOS, Bride tells him: it is the new call, and it may be his last chance to send it
They laugh, unaware of how prophetic the joke is. In fact, SOS had been officially adopted as the international code since 1908, but was still little used compared with Marconi’s traditional CQD. Phillips would alternate between the two in his desperate transmissions.
At 00:20, the RMS Carpathia, a Cunard liner heading south-east of the Titanic, picks up the distress call.
The message: come at once, they have struck an iceberg.
The Carpathia answers immediately, but she is about 58 miles6 away. It will take her more than three hours to get there.
Meanwhile, the transmitter grows weaker as the radio and generator compartments fill with water. Phillips and Bride keep transmitting relentlessly, alternating CQD and SOS. At 01:45, Phillips sends a message saying the water has reached the engine room. Twenty minutes later, Smith comes back to tell the two men they have done their duty and are released. But they choose to stay, even though the end seems inevitable.
As Smith leaves, Harold catches a man stealing Jack’s lifejacket. They fight, and the man is left unconscious on the floor. Jack, absorbed in his last transmissions, sees nothing.
Jack Phillips sends a last signal at 02:17, a final burst of CQD/SOS before the power dies for good. A few minutes later the Titanic is almost under water. The two men leave their post. Then the ship.
Harold heads for collapsible B. In the distance, he sees Jack running aft to find a boat. He will never see him again. Jack Phillips, 25, is said to have reached a floating raft at the last moment (the upturned collapsible “B”), only to die of the freezing cold a few minutes later. Harold Bride is swept away by a wave but also manages to climb onto the upturned collapsible B. He survives there, his feet frozen, until the Carpathia reaches the scene of the wreck at 04:00.
Between 04:10 and 08:30, she picks up the 705 survivors found in the boats. Bride, injured as he is, joins the Carpathia’s operator, Harold Cottam, to send the list of survivors and messages ashore.