The First Real Time Tragedy: The Sinking of the RMS Titanic

On this episode of Our American Stories, William Hazelgrove, author of One Hundred and Sixty Minutes: The Race to Save the RMS Titanic tells the story of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio and founder of the Marconi Company, as well as his surviving wireless operator-Harold Bride and how both men and their technology helped save over 700 people.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to hear and search for the Our American Stories podcast,
go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.
A little own fact about the Titanic is that it
was actually owned by an American. JP Morgan up next

(00:34):
to story about this infamous ship, to the eyes of
two men who often don't come up in discussions about
the ship, the ship's wireless operators, William Hazelgrove, will tell
the story. But to start us off, here's a reading
from Titanic survivor Jack Thayer's autobiography. Let's get into the story.

(00:58):
Those were ordinary days, and into them had crept only gradually.
The telephone, the talking machine, the automobile, the airplane due
to have soon such a stimulating yet devastating effect upon civilization.
The morning paper had headlines no larger than half an
engine height. These days were peaceful. It seems to me

(01:19):
that the disaster about to occur was the event which
not only made the world rub its eyes in a wake,
but woke it with a start, keeping it moving at
a rapidly accelerating pace ever since with less peace, satisfaction,
and happiness my mind. The world of today awoke April fifteenth,

(01:41):
nineteen twelve, and the night Carpathia came into New York.
It's thundering, it's lightning, rains coming down the dock in
New York Harbor. If the mob or people, thousands of
people who don't know if they're husband, wives, daughters, sons
have made it or not. And they see this ship,

(02:03):
our marching out of the darkness, brilliantly lit up, and
it's met in the harbor by all these reporters on boats.
These reporters literally start throwing gabulets of money onto the
deck of Carpathia, telling the pastor jump off, we'll pick
you out of the water and we'll pay you whatever
you want for your story, anything you want for your story.
And when the harbor pilot comes on, they all try

(02:25):
and jump on board too, and they literally get punched
and thrown off because this is the scoop of the century.
And Carpathia pulls up, and of course Googlar Marconi is
at the head of the crowd to get on Carpathia
when she pulls in, which has his wireless operator Harold
Bride on board. Everybody wanted to talk to him because
he's a surviving wireless operator. Marconi was a fascinating guy.

(02:58):
Googla mcconni was from Italy and he had a little
quasi interest in science, but he really had more of
an entrepreneur's bent. He actually started some experiments in his
attic of his parents home. He had a cathode ray
and in the cathode ray where iron filings. So when
he set out an electric signal, the iron filings jumped

(03:19):
into the middle of a sort of glass bar in
the middle of the cathode rays. So this meant that
action had occurred from this electrical signal. So the question was, well,
how far could this go? So he had a friend
take a gun and go off a long distance and
he shot off a signal, and when this friend received
the signal, he shot off his gun. So he developed

(03:43):
this technology, and the others had been developing, but he
saw it. Takes it one step further and he gives
a science experiment. And basically they have a transmitter and
a receiver, and the receiver is in a box the
things and so they're in this theater all these people
are there, and so basically Marconi would walk around the

(04:06):
theater with this box. You know, somebody's manning the transmitter,
and so they sent off the wireless telegraphy signal. It
would hit the box and it would dig, and everybody
kept looking for wires. You know, where are the wires
connecting this box to this transmitter. And Marconi just kept
walking around with it's sort of like almost away or

(04:27):
presenting this new technology wireless. So then he started to think,
you know, I wonder if this would work on water.
That's really what you need. You need these ships to
be in contact, because up to them ships would just disappear.
Nobody knew what happened to him, So everybody's like, no, no,

(04:48):
no, no no, it won't work because the Earth is curved.
The radio waves would just bounce off in the space.
There's no way to work. So he went through these
all these experiments on the English Channel and basically, you know,
he had he erected towers or blown down. He ended
up using a kite to sort of get up an
antenna aloft, but he was able to transmit a signal

(05:09):
across the English Channel. So they thought, well why not
the ocean and again everybody's like, there's no way this
is gonna work. And they didn't understands at the time
wireless can only go about five hundred miles during the
daylight hours. But at night, on a cold, clear night
like April fourteenth, nineteen twelve, where was just brilliantly clear,

(05:30):
these singles could bounce on and on up to two
thousand miles. So when mcconi proved this, this was amazing
to people. This was just groundbreaking because now a ship
in the middle of Atlantic Ocean could tell the world
what was going on. And by the way, that's what
makes Titanic so unique. One of the things is that
it's the first real time disaster. So Marconi's waiting to

(05:58):
die and aboard Carpathia. Harold Cotton, who was the wireless
man on Carpathia, literally keels over from exhaustion. So they
say to Harold Bride, who who survives under a lifeboat
feed are hardly frost bitting. They say him, look, we
know you've been through hell and back, but can you
take over the wireless You only one it knows Morse code,

(06:19):
so he does. The first telegram he gots is from
Google and Marconi. He says to him, don't say a word.
Don't say a word to anybody. I've arranged for you
to tell your story to the New York Times for
a thousand dollars, which is like twenty thousand today. And
he doesn't. And Carpathio pulls up and he's literally one
of the first people to get on. He's a rock

(06:41):
star by today's standards. Everybody knows who this guy is.
So the sieves part for him when he walks on
board and he goes right to the wireless room where
Harold Bride is still working, still sending messages, and he
says to him, your work is done. He has him
taken off the ship and taken to a waiting car.
Then he's taken to the strandhood taw where these reporters

(07:01):
are there, and then he sits down and tells them
what happened on Titanic. He gives them the story basically
of the century. I was standing by Phillips telling him
to go to bed when the captain put his head
in the cabinet, we struck an iceberg. And you're listening
to William Hazelgrove tell the story of the first real

(07:23):
time disaster in the world. When we come back more
of this remarkable story here on our American Story. Folks,
if you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all

(07:46):
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to learn more. And we returned to our American Stories

(08:11):
and our story on the sinking of the r M
S Titanic with the eyes of her wireless operators, Harold
Bride and Jack Phillips. When we last left off, William
Hazelgrove was telling us about the night the Titanic's rescue ship,
the Carpathia, sailed into New York Harbor, and a little
bit about the man who invented the technology that helped

(08:32):
save some of the Titanic's passengers, Buglio Marconi. You'll be
hearing excerpts of Harold Bride's interview with The New York
Times throughout this piece. Let's return to the story. Begin
at the beginning. I was born at Nunhead, England, twenty

(08:55):
two years ago and joined the Marconi Forces last July.
I first worked on the Hoverford and then Lucia. I
joined the Titanic at Belfast with Jack Phillips. Jack Phillips
and Harold Bride were two working class US from England,
and they both worked on different ships and ended up
on Titanic. Actually, for Jack Phillips it was really a

(09:16):
sort of promotion. He was really leading the team there,
if you will. I didn't have much to do on
that Titanic except relieve Phillips from midnight until some time
in the morning when he woke up on the night
of the accident. I was not sending it was asleep.
I was due to be up to relieve Phillips earlier
than usual. These guys are sort of like the computer
nerds of today. It is a young man's game. At

(09:38):
this point. Nobody understands Morse code except these operators. It
sounds like static and it's amazing they can decipher this,
but they do and they're able to travel. It's exciting
for them to be on these big ship and they
really are on the cutting edge of technology of their time.

(09:59):
This to send a wireless message through the atmosphere, it's
just amazing and it's going to change everything. And what's
interesting is this, they are pretty much isolated from the ship.
The wireless operators slept in their room. They ate there.

(10:21):
They had no contact with the crew and by the
end the room was called the silent room because it
had to be insulated against several things. One was noise
coming in, but two they were using direct current. We
is alternating current, so we don't electrocute ourselves. Direct current
you step it way up, especially if you've got a
broadcast out shoot out these signals across the Atlantic. The

(10:43):
key would literally crack very loudly, so they had to
also muffle that. And that reminds me that hadn't been
for a lucky thing, we would have never been able
to send any call for help. So before takenus it
hits the iceberg. Believe it or not, their wireless set
was broken. You know, the day of April fourteen. We

(11:06):
know something was wrong on Sunday and Phillips and I
worked for seven hours to find it. We found it,
burned out Secretary at last and repaired it just a
few hours before the iceberg was struck, and they had
all these messages piled up. Wireless is really for passengers,
Harold Bride, Jack Phillips did not work for White Star.
They worked for Marconi. And that's really how Marconi made

(11:28):
his money, because you could go send a telegram now
from Titanic, and Titanic had the most powerful wireless set
you could put on a ship, so you could send
a telegram back to New York saying, Hey, Jim, I'm
in the middle of the Atlantic on Titanic. I'm in
a great time. Mikia for lunch. Also, what they could
do is they could take information from a shore station

(11:48):
where the information would be beamed out or shot out
to Titanic. And then they had big printing presses, and
Titanic had its own newspaper, so then Titanic would create
a newspaper so they're rich could sit and have their
coffee and croissants and read about say the Chicago Cubs
or whatever. This was amazing to people, and it was
a pretty sophisticated system. I mean they had pneumatic tubes.

(12:10):
Stewards would take the messages to the room. They've come
out with a message, but it was laborious to send them,
and so they would just pile up. You know, there's
a lot of passengers, so these guys are going hard
at it when a ship named the Californian is approaching
pretty close there, maybe ten to twelve miles away, and

(12:31):
they've got some messages for tight ten. And so what
happens is while Jack Phillips is the head operator, is
trying to get through these messages, this operator breaks in
and it's alt of like getting in your car with
the radio turned up. If these boats are on top
of each other, then you know it's very loud to
the operator, and so he breaks in and blows Jack

(12:53):
phillips ears off with this message saying, hey, I've got
some messages for you, some ice warnings, and Phillips retorts
he felt, shut up, I'm working Cape Race. And so
this operator there's only one operator in California, which again
it is ten or twelve miles away, says, you know,
it's been a long day, and he turns his set off,
which is going to have implications down the line that

(13:13):
are amazing. So now as Titanic steaming towards this iceberg, yes,
ice warnings have come in. Yes, they've been taken up
to the bridge. Had they been acted on. No, A
couple of them are stuck onto a bulletin board. So
at this moment, as they're plunging through the North Atlantic
at twenty four knots, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride are

(13:35):
just working it trying to get passenger messages out. It's
bitterly cold, and lookout fleet is up in the crow's
nest looking for icebergs. Also, it's incredibly calm. The North
Atlantic is usually not this calmp but it's a mill
it's like glass. So the stars are all reflecting off

(13:58):
the water too, so you have a million speckled stars
against this cold night. It's so cold that there's sort
of these ice particles floating around the deck lights, which
is very much evidence that you're entering into an ice field,
because those icebergs turn it sort of super cold. They
just sort of bring the temperature down around them, so

(14:19):
they're up there, they're freezing. They see the iceberg, they
call down and they reverse the engine. They crank it
over the wheel over to the left, and Titanic takes
a very very long time to turn. When she finally does,
they feel like they missed her. But they stopped the ship.

(14:41):
Captain Smith, who's in his stateroom, comes bursting out. What happened?
The watertight doors are closed. Now. The watertight doors are
the reason the Titanic is called unsinkable. What are they?
They're these big steel doors that take every bulkhead and
seal it off. Now, in theory, if a bullhead sealed off,

(15:01):
the water could only come in so far. With Titanic,
the bulkheads only go up to e deck. That means
that this water coming in is going to fill up
the first compartment and then go up and over into
the second Compartment'd be like if you're sitting in your
living room and you left the windows open in the
bedroom next to your living room, and your bedroom fills

(15:22):
up with water and it comes over the top into
your living room where you're sitting. Or think of a
weight thrown into the front of a canoe just pulling
it down. Well, that's what the water does now. Even still,
Titanic can float with four compartments flooded, but five compartments flooded.
So now the weight of the water thirty nine thousand

(15:43):
tons rushing in is overcoming the ship's buoyancy. And so
at this point Titanic is doomed, though for most people
there's no evidence of it. This is a monster ship.
People are still serving drinks, food still being served, everything's
going along like nothing's wrong. Also, there is no PA,

(16:05):
there is no public address system, and there's been no
lifeboat drills. So you have these lifeboats ninety feet up
and they've never worked together. It's ever lower them, mostly
though people don't know. So how do you find out? Well,
the first class, the steward comes up, I say, sir,
but you might put it on your life jacket and
coming up topic which is not a big thing, but

(16:26):
we might get in the boats, so they do. How
do the third class steerish famously in the bottom of
the ship find out maybe somebody else down the hallway.
Must of them don't speak English anyway, and by the way,
they're down in this labyrinth of a ship, they have
no idea how to get up there, so it's all
against them right away. And famously, in the movie we
all see the blocked doorways passages and we think, oh,

(16:49):
how evil. Actually that wasn't evil. That's the way it
was then. It was expected a white star to separate
the classes. So yes, doors were block against the third
class coming up and bamming into the first class dressed
and probably ten thousand dollar dinner clothes, going to dinner.
And so you had that kind of money with people

(17:10):
who literally own just to close on their back down
in steerage, coming to America for a better life. And
you're listening to William Hazelgrove tell the remarkable story of
the sinking of the Titanic through what we would consider

(17:31):
now to be tech geeks, the two wireless operators who
were working with the cunning edge technology of its time.
Technology they could have saved the Titanic and in the
end preserved the story of the Titanic and saved lives.
When we come back more of this storytelling again from
the wireless technician's point of view here on our American story,

(18:08):
and we returned to our American stories in our story
on the sinking of the r M S Titanic, who
the eyes of her wireless operators, Harold Bride and Jack Phillips.
When we last left off. The Titanic had struck an
iceberg and was slowly sinking into the Atlantic Ocean. The
water temperature at the time twenty seven degrees and her

(18:30):
Captain E. J. Smith, was now forced to reckon with
how exactly he was going to save the twenty two
hundred and forty people on board. Here again is William Hazelgrove.
Let's talk about Captain Smith. Captain Smith's like a duckhead
on the hat. He does look like the captain in
the movie you know, Big White Beer, Very August. But

(18:52):
he's never had a tragedy like this. In fact, he
just gave an interview before the crews saying, you know what,
ship sinking to a thing in the past. Technology is
too advanced for that. So he's stunned, and he goes
down to the wireless room, the silent room, and the
captain put his head in the cabin and said, we've
struck an iceberg, and I'm having an inspection made to

(19:13):
tell what it has done for us. You'd better get
ready to send out a call for assistance, but don't
send it until I tell you too. The captain went
away and in ten minutes, I should estimate he came back.
We could hear a terrible confusion outside. Then they call
for assistance, ordered the captain, barely putting us head in
the door. What call stress, son, Phillips asked the regulation
international call for help. That's that. Then the captain was gone.

(19:37):
Phillips began to send c QT. He flashed away at it,
and we joked while he did so. Now CQT means basically,
listen up for what's coming next. An easy translation it
has come quick distress. It's not literally that's what it means,
but basically that's what it says. Now at that moment,

(19:57):
you're sending out this message. All right, So Titanic has
four big antennas over the top of the phone, so
it only exists a one photo and they start beaming
these things out, shooting him out over the North Atlantic
at night, which is the best time. And what's it say?
It says, has struck an Iceberg? Need a media assistance?
Launchitude latitude over and over and over. This is what

(20:20):
Jack Phillips is just sending. He's just sending it one
out on top of the other. Now, this early technology
has only so many frequencies, so when somebody's sending something out.
You can't hear what's coming back. It's like early early phones.
When the early phones out of rural circuits, people had
to literally wait for the farm down the road to
get off so they could get on, or they could

(20:41):
listen to their call. And that's what this wireless technology
is like. You're sending out, but you can't hear coming back.
So Jack Phillips has to take him faith mostly that
people are hearing him. And he's just repeatedly sending these
signals out to any ship. So what is me? What
are they helping? Helping the ship will get this turn

(21:03):
around and come full speed toward them because they've only
got two hours and forty minutes or one hundred and
sixty minutes to live. You know, these two wireless operators
who have mattered very little up to this point, really
now everyone's fate on board the Titanic depends on them.

(21:28):
Then the captain came back, what are you sending? Yes,
c QD. Philips are played. The humor of the situation
appealed to me, and I cut him with a little
remark that made us all laugh, including the captain sends.
I said, it's the new call, and it maybe your
a last chance to send it Philips. The laugh changed
the signal to SS. Now they're sending both, and first

(21:48):
it comes out, have struck an Iceberg need a meat assistance? Well,
then it changes to have struck an Iceberg putting off
women and children. He puts that in there because that,
in terms of the mariner code, is we're in trouble.
We're going down fast, and that is way beyond has
struck an Iceberg need assistance. Many ships begin to answer

(22:11):
our signals, the Frankfurt, the Baltic, then the Carpathia answered
our signal. We told our position and told her that
we were sinking by the head. So Harold Cotton, who's
aboard the Carpathia, who's wireless operator, he actually knows Jack Phillips,
and they get the message late almost twelve thirty. The
operator on the Carpathia went to tell the captain and

(22:32):
in five minutes returned and told us that the captain
of the Carpathia was putting about and heading for us.
Captain Rostrom's the captain. He was known as the electric
spark among us man. He's incredibly energetic and he's very
well liked by the crew. By the passengers. He's known
as a very fair captain. Now when he gets the

(22:53):
message from Titana saying come quick, distressed, he too is
in the North Atlantic, and he too is at risk
of sinking if he hits an iceberg. And he makes
his decision very quickly that he was going to put
not only his life, but it really everybody in his ship.

(23:14):
He's gonna put all their lines on the line to
go help these people on distrust because he feels that's
his duty, and he's gonna take his ship faster than
it's ever been designed to go. He gets up every stoker,
the guys who shovel coal, and gives them all a
shot of brandy and says, go to it. And he
diverts all the steam from the passengers. Okay, so these

(23:36):
are steam driven ships, so the big pistons, right, So
the more steam, the faster they go. Turns the Carpasia around,
uncovers his lifeboat, sets up a hospital treize station, puts
out extra lookouts, says a prayer. He's a religious man,
and takes off full speed for Titanic, weaving his way
through icebergs, putting it all on the line. He's going

(23:57):
so fast that the passengers, who are now freezing because
they don't have any heat anymore, are coming out and saying,
we think Carpathias on fire, and he's going towards the
shore to run in the ground. That's what ships would
do if they caught fire. They'd make a bee line
for the shore and just try and run the ship aground.
Because nobody's told them what they're really doing. So Rostrom,
who's just hell a band on, getting there immediately becomes

(24:21):
their best shot at being rescued, even though he's fifty
miles away. But we continue to send every few minutes
Philips to send me to the captain with little messages.
They were merely telling how the Carpathia was coming her
away and gave her speed. I noticed, as that came
back from one trip that they were putting women and

(24:41):
children in lifeboats. I noticed that the list board was increasing,
and Phillips told me that the wireless was growing weaker.
So at two am, Captain Smith comes into the silent
room and he said, men, you have done your full duty.
You can do no more. Abandon your cabin. Now it's
every man for himself. You look out for yourselves. I

(25:02):
release you. That's the way of it. At this kind
of time, every man for himself. Titanics at about a
forty five degree angle. Water's coming into the wireless room.
The ship's going down. Well, Phillips and Bride stay there.
The dynamos are still going. There's still some power, even

(25:25):
though it's weak. It's sort of like rural circuits getting fainter.
You know, they've turned kind of almost ran the lights,
but it's still enough to try and get out these signals.
So they stay there right up until to twenty when
she's going down. Phillips clung on, sending, sending. He clung

(25:46):
on for about ten to fifteen minutes after the captain
had released him. The water was then coming into our cabin.
How poor Phillips worked through it, I don't know. He
was a brave man. I learned to love him that night,
and I suddenly felt for him a great reverence see
him standing there thinking to his work while everybody else
was raging about. I will never live to forget the
work of Phillips for the last awful fifteen minutes. Another

(26:14):
strange moment is a stoker comes in. He's one of
the guys shovels Colt and tries to steal Jack phillips
jacket from him while he works. Something happened that I
hate to tell about. I was back in my room
getting Phillips's money for him, and as I looked at
the door, I saw a stoker or somebody from belowdecks
leaning over Phillips from behind. He was too busy to
notice what the man was doing. The man was slipping

(26:36):
a lifebelt off of Phillips's back. He was a big
man too, as you can see. I'm very small, and
I don't know what it was that I got a
hold of. I remember in a flash the way Phillips
had clung on. How I had to fix the lifebelt
in place because he was too busy to do it.
I know that man from belowdecks had his own life
belt and should have known where to get it. I
suddenly felt a passion and not let that man die
decent Taylor's death. I wish he might have stretched rope

(26:58):
or walked plank. I did my duty. I hope I
had finished him, and I don't know. We left him
on the floor of the wireless room and he was
not moving. And you're listening to William Hazelgrove tell the
story of the sinking of the r M S. Titanic
when we come back the end of this remarkable story,
the sinking of the Titanic here on our American story,

(27:21):
and we return to our American stories in our final
portion of our story on the sinking of the Titanic

(27:44):
through the eyes of her wireless operators, Jack Phillips and
Harold Bride. When we last left off, the situation on
Titanic had become increasingly hopeless, and despite being ordered to
abandon their cabin, the wireless operators continue to send desperate
messages for help. Eventually, both Harold Bride and Jack Phillips
would leave the room in search for some salvation. Here

(28:08):
again is William hazel Grove. Let's continue with the story
from Aft Canatoons of the band as a ragtime tune.
I don't know what Phillips are in Aft, and that
was the last time I ever saw him alive. Basically,
all order broke down in Titanic. They run out of
the wireless room and one remaining boat called an Inglehart,

(28:30):
which is a collapsible. Some men were trying to get
it off the roof. I guess there wasn't a sailor
in the crowd. They couldn't do it. And the way
most people end up in the water, and Titanic was
a final wave came over this ship. Big wave carried
the boat off. I had hold of an oarlock and
I went off with it. Harold Bride ends up under
a lifeboat overturned in the water, and I remember realizing

(28:53):
I was went through and whatever happened, I must not
breathe or I was underwater. I knew I had to
fight for it. Nd how I got out from under
the boat, I do not know, but I felt a
breath of air at last. There were men all around me,
hundreds of them. The sea was dotted with them, all
depending on their life belt. When Titanic was sinking, it

(29:19):
was strangely beautiful. You had this huge ship inverting, all
lit up against this cold sky with all these stars,
and this water that was just like glass, and it
was an incredible spectacle. And then of course it broke apart.
He was a beautiful sight. Then moke and sparks were
rushing out of her funnel. There must have been an explosion,

(29:42):
but we had heard none. We only saw it. The
big stream of sparks. The ship was gradually turning her nose,
just like the duck does when it goes down for
a dive. The band was still playing. I guess all
the band went down, and the sound was like a
thousand freight trains crashing, because everything inside Titanic broke loose

(30:03):
when it inverted and went crashing down. All these big
engines went crashing down from one end of the ship
to the other. And then she went straight down, and
then there was a strange fog over the water that followed.
When at last the waves washed over her rudder. There
wasn't the least bit of suction. I could feel. She
must have kept going down slowly as she had been.

(30:24):
I felt after a little while, like thinking, it was
very cold. I saw a boat near me and put
all my strength into an effort to swim to it.
It was hard work. I was all done when a
hand reached up from the boat and pulled me aboard.
It was our same collapsible. The same crowd was on it.
He climbs on top of it and lays there, his
feet severely frost bitten, and literally, if anybody moves the

(30:47):
wrong way, they fall off, and they fall off and die.
It's an incredible moment because on this lifeboat there's probably
fifteen men, all laying at different angles, literally laying on
top of each other. Think of a boat. I just think, well, dingy,
a rowboat turned over and you're laying on top of it,
and you had ten, twelve, fifteen other people laying on

(31:07):
top of it. And you're literally all laying on top
of each other because if you move, you fall into
the water. Somebody sat on my legs there were wedged
in between slats and being wrenched. I didn't have the
heart to tell the man to move. It was a
terrible sight all around then swimming and thinking. I lay
where I was, letting the man wrench my feet out

(31:27):
of shape. Others came near, but nobody gave them a hand.
The bottom up boat already had more men than it
could hold, and it was sinking. And on this boat
is really this is a sort of microcosm of humanity.
As we floated around on our capsized boat, and I
kept straining my eyes for a ship's lights, somebody said,
don't the rest of you think we ought to pray?

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The man who made the suggestion asked, what the religion
of the others was each man called out his religion.
When it was Catholic, it was Methodist, when it was Presbyterian.
It was decided that the most appropriate prayer for all
was the Lord's Prayer. We spoke it over in chorus,
but the man who first suggested that we pray as
the leader. So these twenty boats are within calling distance

(32:17):
of each other. When Harold Bride says, I'm the wireless operator,
and I know Carpathia's coming to rescue us. This is
really the only flicker of hope they have, because once
Titanic sunk, it was just gone, and it wasn't like
there was a lot of evidence of its passing, and

(32:38):
it was just ungodly quiet. And of course Carpathia came
an hour and ten minutes later. I saw some lights
off in the distance and knew that a steamship was
coming to our aid, but I didn't care what happened.
I just laid and gasped when I could built a
pain in my feet. And these were some of the
last people to get aboard carp Pathea, and the water

(33:02):
was starting to kick up, and actually Carpathia could not
maneuver correctly. To get them to the side where they were,
they had to hoist most people in because they were
too cold and too weak to climb up the rope
ladder into Carpathia's hold. I tried the rope ladder, my
feet paint badly, but I reached the top and felt
the hands reaching out to me. The next thing I knew,

(33:23):
a woman was leaning over me in a cabin and
I felt her hand waving back my hair and rubbing
my face. I felt somebody at my feet in the
warmth of a jolt of liquor. Somebody got me under
their arms. Then I was hustled down below to the hospital.
That was early in the day, I guess. Then I
passed out. Lawrence Beasley wrote when they were on Carpathia,

(33:45):
and he said it was strangely quiet. Nobody said a word.
Why was this well, because all these women, who were
mostly the survivors, got on board realized then their husbands
were gone and they were widows. There was a girl
with a Browning camera and she took several photos, and
one of them is of a lifeboat that pulled up

(34:07):
to the side of Carpathian. And these people just looked
so cold, but mostly how empty this lifeboat is. You know,
it was so underloaded. And then she took another one
of all these women just sitting on the deck, wrapped
up in blankets, all these women who lost their husbands.
So you know they really I mean for these people
who were essentially shell shock, and they didn't even had
that term yet, because that term came from World War One,

(34:29):
you know, five years later, when these big shelves would
hit troops and they didn't know what was wrong with them,
but they all had PTSD, no doubt. Harold Bride, he
literally collapsed once he got on board Karpathia. They took
him into this sort of makeshift hospital area, and then
he woke up, and they told me that the Carpathia's

(34:51):
wireless man was getting queer. And what I help after that?
I never left the wireless room, though I don't know
what happened among the passengers. I just worked the splutter,
never died down. I knew it soothed the hurt and
felt like a tie to the world of friends at home.
How could I take news queries? Sometimes I'd let a
newspaper ask a question and get a long string of

(35:13):
stuff asking for full particulars about everything. Whenever I started
to take such a message, I thought that the poor
people waiting for their messages to go, hoping for answers
to them. I shut off the inquiries and sent my
personal messages, and I feel I did the right thing.
I was still sending my messages when mister Marconi and
the Times reporter arrived. I asked that I prepare this statement.

(35:33):
There were maybe one hundred left. I would like to
send them all because I know I could get rest
easier if I knew those messages. I'd gone to the
friends waiting for them, but an ambulance man was waiting
with a spreadshir and I guess I've got to go
with them. I hope my legs get better soon. And
of course Harold Bride would go on to live with
his family after this and went back to the service

(35:55):
for a little while, but then he left and I
think he went into business, had a family, and disappeared
from history. Here's the Titanic really, Jack Phillips and Harold
Bride and Captain Rostrom. Captain Rostrom was given the Congressional
Medal of Honor, medals from the British Medals from groups

(36:16):
went on to an illustrious career. And these two pretty
young guys put their own lives on the line and
stayed at their posts when they could have left at
two am, when Captain Smith would leave them. They stayed
all the way to the end and just kept trying
to get somebody there to help them. And it's only

(36:37):
through their efforts, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, by staying
at their posts, they allowed those seven hundred people to survive.
You know, I mean, you look at Titanic, you say, oh,
it's a great catastrophe. Well, another way to look at this,
it was really solved an amazing rescue that they were
able to pluck these people from the middle of the
North Atlantic at night and save them. And that is
only because a wireless technology. And you know, there is

(37:01):
a plan where you think of heroics and you really
it comes down to this. There's a plan to get
the wireless room that's still on the floor of the
Atlantic because it's it's basically falling apart and they want
to get the set up. And if there was something
embedded in those last coils, those last electromagated coils, you know,

(37:21):
it would be that last message and really, if you
take their messages, really, what they're saying is will you
come help us? Will you come help us? And this
is something that even today is still the same basic
human plea. So really, I would say Captain Rostrom, Jack Phillips,
Harold Bride, they were the heroes of Titanic and the

(37:43):
special thanks to William Hazelgrove. The book he wrote about
this is called one hundred and sixty Minutes The Race
to Save the RMS Titanic. Pick it up at your
local bookstore or on Amazon or the usual online suspects.
The story of the RMS Titanic as told to the

(38:03):
lives of Harold Bride and Jack Phillip's ear on our
American story