Mid-Atlantic Collison and the Radio Operator Actions

It was to the wireless that the passengers on the Republic owed their salvation.

Continuing Radios’ First Triumph,
with a selection from an article in Putnam’s Magazine by Arthur D. H. Smith. This selection is presented in 2 installments, each one 5 minutes long. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Radios’ First Triumph.

Time: 1909
Place: Mid Atlantic

Within two hours of the moment when the wireless operator at Siasconset was startled by the ill-fated Republic’s C Q D call, last January, the public was beginning to get the news. The White Star liner, Mediterranean-bound, had been rammed by an unknown vessel, and was sinking, though her passengers were safe. Crowds gathered in the streets of New York, whence she had proudly sailed the day before. They besieged the steamship offices and the offices of the Marconi Company. It took little imagination to realize that a drama of surpassing interest was being played behind the curtain of fog that enshrouded the sea south of Nantucket Island.

In this state of public suspense, wireless telegraphy bridged the billowing waves, telling in quick, throbbing beats the story of the accident. Wireless stations on shore caught the brief bulletins from the rescuing liners that were feeling their way toward the Republic; and these were served up to the waiting multitudes on shore as fast as newspaper presses could throw off the printed sheets. Now and then, a faint buzzing in a receiver indicated a message from the Republic herself, where “Jack” Binns — the youngster of twenty-six who became famous in a day — was sitting at the key in his shattered cabin, nursing the power in his depleted accumulators, so that he might keep in touch with the outside world.

It was to the wireless that the passengers on the Republic owed their salvation. The collision water-proof bulkheads and the iron discipline of the liner’s crew must receive their due meed of praise. Yet, had it not been for the wireless instrument that Binns contrived to run on his accumulators, after the incoming water had flooded the engine-room dy namos, it is quite conceivable that the Republic’s danger might have been unknown for hours — perhaps for the two days that, as it was, sufficed to bring her passengers back to New York. To be sure, the transfer to the Florida was made within that time; but the Florida was badly damaged herself, and an attempt to reach port with such an added load might have resulted disastrously. At any rate, it is the wireless that the Republic’s passengers must thank for saving them much discomfort and a certain amount of physical harm.

The world learned a thing or two about the wireless service and the brotherhood of operators in the two days that followed the ramming of the Republic. Previously it had only conceived of the service as nests of wires strung on tall poles. Messages were sent from these, but how or why was beyond the comprehension of all except the scientifically instructed. Of the operators, as well, the world only knew, in a vague general sort of way, that they were men who sat in the little cabins on the hurricane-decks of ocean liners, living amid a constant crackle of blue sparks.

Now, it realizes that a new gild of men who live face to face with danger has been established. For the code of the wireless operator is the code of the locomotive engineer, of the shipmaster, the fireman, the soldier. He sticks to his post to the last. His is the same spirit that animated Captain Sealby, of the Republic, who almost insisted on going down with his ship; for so long as there is a spark to be got from the batteries the wireless operator stays by his key.

It will be many a long day before men of the sea forget the names of “Jack” Binns and H. G. Tattersall, the operator on the Baltic, who sat at his key for fifty-two hours while the work of rescuing the passengers of the Republic and Florida was in progress. With the wall of his metal cabin splintered and shattered by the knife-bow of the Italian liner, Binns stuck to his instrument all through the dreary day, sending, sending, sending the hurry call of the sea — C Q D ! C Q D !

The fog clung round them like a clammy veil; strange noises and mutterings sounded, dimly; the submarine bell signal tinkled an ominous warning that was too late. But Binns stuck to his key and tapped out the cry of the stricken in streaks of electricity that pierced through fog and ether to where the sandspit of Siasconset stretched into the Atlantic.

Of Tattersall it was only known, until he reached New York, that he was the man who, two nights after the accident, ended a message with the pathetic paragraph: “I can send no more. I have been constantly at the key without sleep for fifty- two hours.” Afterward, striding up and down the pier with the nervousness of the man who has lacked sleep so long that it is no longer necessary to him, he told his story of the rescue.

“Excited?” he repeated. “No — that is, I was, once, when I got the first message from the Republic, via Siasconset. After that, I don’t remember anything coherently. Things just happened, one after another. I don’t even remember the order in which they took place. The most trying part of it was having to send and receive those Republic messages, matters of life and death, while all the time the powerful batteries of the shore stations were calling me. It was a terrible strain on the nerves.

Five minutes after the Republic was struck her lights went out, and the dynamos were put out of business. After that, Binns, her operator, had to rely on his accumulators. You can’t get a great deal of power out of your accumulators. They won’t send a spark much more than sixty miles — not more than eighty, at a maximum. And even at sixty miles they are very faint.

With the shore stations jerking out flashes of desperate power, it was all I could do to decipher the feeble signals from the Republic. They were mere buzzes in my receiver, for the first few hours. They were jammed out, as we say, by the powerful messages from the shore stations, dinning and crackling into my ears. But all the time I kept calling ‘Republic! Republic!’ and telling them that we were coming to their aid.

Edward J. Wheeler begins here. Gugllelmo Marconi begins here. Arthur D. H. Smith begins here.

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