Somewhere off the British coast, 11 April 1912.
On board the Titanic, Jack Phillips is senior operator of the wireless room, taking turns with his junior, Harold Bride. Unlike the rest of the crew, they do not work for the White Star Line, which runs the ship, but for Marconi, Guglielmo’s company.
The main reason is that the wireless was not just there to talk to the port. It was a paid service letting passengers talk to dry land. But the Marconi operators also handled weather warnings and safety-at-sea messages, even if those did not always come first. Up on the boat deck, level with the officers’ quarters, the Marconi station was made up of a small bedroom, a soundproofed room (the transmitter-receiver), and in the middle the radio itself: a 5kW spark transmitter, very powerful for the time.
This powerful kit gave a range of 400 miles2 by day, and up to 2,000 miles3 at night, when waves travel better. A crucial detail that will prove fatal: there was no direct telephone line between the wireless room and the bridge. The operators had to carry messages to the bridge themselves or call on stewards, causing delays that were sometimes deadly.
The two men first met in early April to test the equipment during the Titanic’s sea trials. They did not know each other before, but both had been through the Marconi school, so they knew the tools well.
Because in 1912, wireless was still a luxury service. On the Titanic, Phillips and Bride spent most of their time sending private radiograms for wealthy passengers, who loved this fashionable new technology. Messages went to coastal stations (when they were not too far away) or to other ships, generating constant commercial traffic. This overload sometimes got in the way of handling warnings properly, and there was no strict procedure yet to prioritise safety traffic. The operators’ job was an odd mix of upmarket customer service and safety watch, with no clear protocol.
On day two, Jack receives a few messages meant for him personally: it is his birthday! But the party is cut short by equipment faults that leave the pair badly behind on the messages to send.
Day three brings several warnings from other ships reporting ice, but the key one comes on the morning of 14 April, when the cargo ship Mesaba sends a crucial warning of a vast ice field and large icebergs on the Titanic’s route. Phillips, swamped by passengers’ private telegrams, never passes this vital message to the bridge. Which brings us to the famous night of 14 April.
Harold is asleep, waiting for his shift. Phillips, meanwhile, is retuning his equipment because he is entering the range of Cape Race, Newfoundland, which lets him talk directly to that major coastal station.
22:55. Cyril Evans of the Californian warns that his ship has stopped because of icebergs. Phillips tells him to “shut up”, because he is busy with Cape Race. At 23:35, the Californian’s operator switches off his set, leaving the Titanic on her own. Yet the Californian is only about 20 miles away, close enough to see (later) the distress rockets, but too far to understand what they mean without a radio.
23:40. The Titanic hits an iceberg.