April 11, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the Titanic was a marvel of her time—883 feet long, 175 feet tall, and over 52,000 tons. She stood at the cutting edge of naval architecture and symbolized British national pride. Technologically advanced, she carried a Marconi wireless set for near-instant ship-to-shore communication, run by two young "computer nerds" of their day. Their job? Send passengers’ personal messages to land. But on the night of April 14, 1912, that changed. They were suddenly tasked with something unimaginable: trying to save over 2,000 lives in the middle of the North Atlantic. William Hazelgrove, author of One Hundred and Sixty Minutes: The Race to Save the Titanic, tells the story of the Titanic’s sinking through the eyes of the men behind the wireless.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories
to 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 podcasts.
A little known fact about the Titanic is that it
was actually owned.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
By an American.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
JP Morgan up next 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
(00:54):
get into the story.
Speaker 3 (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 the headlines no larger than half
an inch in height. These days were peaceful. It seems
(01:19):
to me that the disaster about to occur was the
event which not only made the world rub its eyes
and awake, but woke it with a start, keeping it
moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since, with less peace, satisfaction,
and happiness in my mind. The world of today awoke
(01:39):
April fifteenth, nineteen twelve, and.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
The night Carpathia came into New York, it's thundering, its
lightning rains coming down the dock in New York Harbor
is just mob or people, thousands of people who don't
know if their husband, wives, daughters have made it or not.
And they see this ship emerging out of the darkness,
brilliantly lit up, and it's met in the harbor by
(02:08):
all these reporters on boats. These reporters literally start throwing
guybulets of money onto the deck of Carpasia, telling in
the past years, 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 and jump
on board too, and they literally get punched and thrown
off because this is the scoop of the century. And
(02:32):
Carpasia pulls up, and of course Google and Marconi is
at the head of the crowd to get on Carpasia
when she pulls in, which has his wireless operator Harold
Bride on board. Everybody wanted to talk to him because
he's the surviving wireless operator. Marconi was a fascinating guy.
(02:58):
Googloe McConney was from Italy and he had a lit
of 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 were iron filings. So
when he sat on an electric signal, the iron filings
(03:18):
jumped 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
his friend received the signal, he shot off his gun.
(03:42):
So he developed this technology that the others had been developing,
but he sort of 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 that things, and so they're in this theater. All
these people are there, and so basically Marconi would walk
(04:05):
around the theater with this box. You know, somebody's manning
the transmitter, and so they'd send off the wireless telegraphy signal.
It would hit the box and it would date, 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, sort of like a most awaiter,
(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 then ships would just disappear.
Nobody knew what happened to him. So everybody's like, no, no, no, no, no,
(04:49):
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
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 across the English Channel.
(05:12):
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 understand 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 it was just brilliantly clear, these singles could bounce
on and on up to two thousand miles. So when
(05:35):
Marconi proved this, this was amazing to people. This was
just groundbreaking because now a ship in the Middle 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.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
YEA.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
So Marconi's waiting to die and a board Carpathia, Harol Cotton,
who was the wireless man on Carpathia, literally keels over
from exhaustion. So they say to Harrold Bride, who who
survives under a lifeboat feeder partly frostbitten. They say, look, well,
you know you've been through helen back, but can you
(06:17):
take over the wireless you only one knows Morse code,
so he does. The first telegram he does 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 Carpasia pulls up and he's literally one of the
(06:38):
first people to get on. He's a rock star by
today's standards. Everybody knows who this guy is. So the
c's part four when he walks on board and he
goes right to the wireless room where Harold Bride is
still working, still send me 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
(06:59):
to the strand hood how where these reporters are there,
and then he sits down and tells them what happened
on Titanic and gives them the story basically of the century.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
I was standing by Phillips telling him to go to
bed when the captain put his head in the cabinet,
he struck an iceberg.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And you're listening to William Hazelgrove tell the story of
the first real 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
(07:42):
us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place
where students study all 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
(08:10):
to our American Stories and our story on the sinking
of the RMS Titanic 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
(08:32):
that helped save some of the Titanic's passengers. Buglio Marcone,
You'll be hearing excerpts of Harold Bride's interview with The New.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
York Times throughout this piece. Let's return to the story.
Begin at the beginning.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
I was born at Nunhead, England, twenty two years ago
and joined the Marconi Forces last July. I first worked
on the Hoverford and then Tania. I joined the Titanic
at Belfast with Jack Phillips.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Jack Phillips and Harrold 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 sort of promotion. He was really leading the
team there, if you will.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
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, but was asleep. I was due
to be up to relieve Phillips earlier than usual.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
These guys are sort of like the computer nerds of today.
It is a young man's game at 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 this big ship, and they really are on
(09:55):
the cutting edge of technology of their time. Ability 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
(10:18):
operators slept in their room. They ate there. They had
no contact with the crew and by the read the
room was called the silent room because had to be
insulated against several things. One was noise coming in, but
two they were using direct current. We use alternating current,
so we didn't electrocute ourselves. Direct current you step it
way up, especially if you've got a broadcast out shoot
(10:40):
out these signals across the Atlantic. The key would literally
crack very loudly, so they had to also muffle that.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
And that reminds me that hadn't been for a lucky thing,
we would have never been able to send any call
for help.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
So before it taking hits the Iceberg, believe it or not,
their wireless set was broken. You know, the day of
April fourteen, We.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Know something was wrong on Sunday and Phillips and I
worked for seven hours to find it. We found a
burned out Secretary at last and repaired it just a
few hours before the iceberg was struck, and they.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Had all these messages piled up. Wireless was really for passengers.
Harold Bride, Jack Phillips did not work for White Star.
They worked for Marconi. And that's really how Marconi made
his money, because you could go send a telegram now
from Titanic, and Titanic had the most powerful wireless set
(11:36):
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, meet you for lunch. Also, what they
could do is they could take information from a shore
station 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
(11:57):
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.
Stewards would take the messages to the room. They've come
out with a message, but it was laborious to send them,
(12:18):
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. They're maybe ten to twelve miles away, and
they've got some messages for titan And so what happens
is while Jack Phillips is the head operator, is trying
(12:39):
to get through these messages, this operator breaks in and
it's sort of like getting 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 Phillip's ears off
with this message saying, hey, I've got some messages for you,
some ice warnings, and Phillips retorts.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
He felt shut up, I'm working Cape Race.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
And so this operator there's only one operator in California,
which again it's ten to twelve miles away, says, you know,
it's been a long day, and he turns his set off,
which is gonna have implications down the line that are amazing.
So now as Titanic steaming towards this iceberg. Yes, ice
warnings have come in. Yes, they've been taken up to
(13:24):
the bridge. Had they been acted on, No, a couple
of them. We're stuck onto a bulletin board. So at
this moment, as they're plunging through the North Atlantic at
twenty four knots, Jack Phillips and Harrold Bride are just
working it, trying to get passing your messages out. It's
bitterly cold, and lookout fleet is up in the crow's
(13:45):
nest looking for icebergs. Also, it's incredibly calm. The North
Atlantic is usually not this calmp but it's a mill pile.
It's like glass. So the stars are all reflecting off
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
(14:08):
is very much evidence that you're entering into an ice field.
Because those icebergs turn it's sort of super cold, they
just sort of bring the temperature down around them. So
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
(14:31):
a very very long time of return. When she finally does,
they feel like they missed her. But they stop the ship.
Captain Smith, who's in his stateroom, comes bursting out. What happened?
The water tight doors are closed. Now. The watertight doors
are the reason the Titanic is called unsinkable. What are they?
(14:53):
They're these big steel doors that take every bulkhead and
seal it off. Now, in theory, if a bullheads sealed off,
the water could only come in. So far with Titanic,
the bulkheads only go up to eedeck. That means that
this water coming in is going to fill up the
first compartment and then go up and over into the
(15:14):
second compartment. It 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
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,
(15:39):
so now the weight of the water thirty nine thousand
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
(16:00):
going along like nothing's wrong. Also, there is no PA,
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 as to ever lower them,
mostly though people don't know. So how do you find out? Well,
the first class, the steward comes up, so I say, sir,
(16:22):
would you might put it on your life jacket and
coming up top of which is not a big thing,
but we might get in the boats, So they do.
How to the third class steerish famously in the bottom
of the ship find out maybe somebody yells down the hallway.
Most of them don't speak English anyway, and by the
way they're down in this labyrinth of a ship, I
have no idea how to get up there. So it's
(16:42):
all against them right away. And famously, in the movie,
we all see the block doorways, passages and we think oh,
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
(17:04):
and probably ten thousand dollars dinner clothes going to dinner.
And so you had that kind of money with people
who literally own just the clothes on their back down
in steerage, coming to America for a better life.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And you're listening to William Hazelgrove tell the remarkable story
of the sinking of the Titanic through what we would
consider now to be tech geeks, the two wireless operators
who were working with the cutting 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.
(17:44):
When we come back more of this storytelling again from
the wireless technicians point of view here on our American story,
(18:08):
and we returned to our American stories and our story
on the sinking of the RMS 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 Captain E. J. Smith,
(18:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Let's talk about Captain Smith. Well, 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 he's never had a tragedy like this. In fact,
he just gave an interview before the cruise saying, you
know what ship sinking thing in the past. Technology is
to advance for that. So he's done, and he goes
(19:05):
down to the wireless room, the silent room.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
And the captain put his head in the cabin and said,
we've struck an iceberg, and I'm having an inspection made
to tell what it has done for us. You better
get ready to send it a call for assistance, but
don't send it until I tell you to. 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 his
(19:28):
head in the door. We call stress in Philips asked
the regulation international call for help.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
That's that. Then the captain was gone. Philps began to
send CQD.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
He flashed away at it, and we joked while he
did so.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Now CQD means basically, listen up for what's coming next,
an easy translation that has come quick distress. It's not
literally that's what it means, but basically that's what it says.
Now at that moment, you're sending out this message, right,
So Aitanic has four big antennas over the top of
the phone, so it only exists in one photo. And
(20:06):
they start beaming these things out, shooting them out over
the North Atlantic at night, which is the best time.
And what's it say. It says, have struck an Iceberg,
need a media assistance longitude latitude, over and over and over.
This is what 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
(20:29):
somebody's sending something out, you can't hear what's coming back.
It's like early early fans, when the early phones out
in rural circuits, people had to literally wait for the
farm down the road to get off so they could
get on, or they could 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
(20:50):
to take them faith mostly that people are hearing him.
And he's just repeatedly sending these signals out to any ship.
So what this is me? What are they helping for?
Helping a ship will get this turn 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.
(21:16):
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.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Then the captain came back, what are you sending? Yes,
eqd bhilps your plan. The humor of the situation appealed
to me, and I cut him with a little remark
that made us all laugh, including the captain. Then sos
I said, it's the new call and it maybe our
last chance to send it. Philps with the laugh changed
the signal the SOS.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Now they're sending both, and first it comes out, have
struck an Iceberg need imediate 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,
(22:06):
and that is way beyond has struck an Iceberg need assistance.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Many ships begin to answer our signals, the Frankfurt, the Baltic.
Then the Carpathia answered our signal. We told her our
position and told her that we were sinking by the head.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
So Harold Cotton, who's aboard the Carpathia, who's the wireless operator,
he actually knows Jack Phillips, and they get the message
late almost twelve thirty.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
The operator on the Carpathia went to tell the captain
and in five minutes returned and told us that the
captain of the Carpathia was putting about and heading for us.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Captain Rostrum's the captain. He was known as the electric
spark among this men. 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
message from Titanic saying come quick, distressed, he too is
(23:00):
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.
He's gonna put all their lives 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
(23:22):
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
are steam driven ships, so the big pistons, right, So
the more steam, the faster they go, turns the carpasier around,
(23:44):
uncovers his lifeboat, sets up a hospital triage 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
so fast that the passengers who are now because they
don't have any heat anymore, are coming out and saying,
we think Carpasia is on fire, and he's going towards
(24:06):
the shore to run on the ground. This is what
ship would do if they caught fire. They'd make a
beeline for the shore and just try and run the
ship aground. Because nobody's told them what they're really doing.
So Rostrum, who's just hell bent on getting there, immediately
becomes their best shot at being rescued, even though he's
fifty miles away.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
While we continue to send three few minutes, Philips will
send me to the capital. Of little messages, they were
merely telling how the Carpathia was coming her away and
gave her speed. I noticed as I came back from
one trip that they were putting women in children in lifeboats.
I noticed that the list board was increasing, and Phillips
told me that the wireless was growing weaker.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
So at two am, Captain Smith comes into the silent room.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
And he said, men, you have done your full duty.
You can do no more. Bend in your cabin. Now
it's every man for himself. You look out for yourselves.
I release you. That's the way of it. At this
kind of time, every man for himself.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
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 though it's weak. It's sort of
like rural circuits getting fainter, you know. They turned kind
of almost rad the lights, but still enough to try
(25:33):
and get out these signals. So they stay there right
up until two twenty when she's going down.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Phillips clung on, sending, sending. He clung 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 seems, standing
there thinking to his work while everybody else was raging about.
(26:04):
I will never live to forget the work of Phillips
for the last awful fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Another strange moment is a stoker comes in and these
are one of the guy's shovels. Colt and tries to
steal Jack phillips jacket from him.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
While he works. Something happened that I hate to tell about.
I was back in my room getting Phillips his money
for him, and as I looked at the door, I
saw a stoker or somebody from below decks leaning over
Phillips from behind. He was too busy to notice what
the man was doing. The man was slipping a life
belt 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 ahold of. I
(26:43):
remember in a flash the way Phillips had clung on.
How I had to fix the life belt 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 passionate and not let that man die decent tailor's death.
I wish he might have stretched rope or walked a plank.
I did. I hope I had finished him. I don't know.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
We left him on the floor of the wireless room
and he was not moving.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
And you're listening to William Hazelgrove tell the story of
the sinking the RMS Titanic when we come back the
end of this remarkable story, the sinking of the Titanic
here on our American story, and we returned to our
(27:38):
American stories in our final portion of our story on
the sinking of the Titanic. They're 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 continued to send desperate messages for help. Eventually, both
(28:02):
Harold Bride and Jack Phillips would leave the room in
search for some salvation. Here again is William hazel Grove.
Let's continue with the.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Story from aft. Can of tunes of the band It's
a ragtime tune. I don't know what Philips ran aft,
and that was the last time I ever saw him alive.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Basically, all order broke down in Titanic. They run out
of the wireless room and one remaining boat called an
ingle Heart, which is collapsible. Some men were trying to
get it off the roof.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
I guess there wasn't a sailor in the crowd. They
couldn't do.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
It, and the way most people end up in the water,
and Titanic was a final wave came over this ship.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
A big wave carried the boat off. I had hold
of an orelock and I went off with it.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Harold Bride ends up under a lifeboat overturned in the water, and.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
I remember realizing I was wet through and whatever happened,
I must not breathe, for I was underwater.
Speaker 5 (28:58):
I knew I had to fight for it.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
And 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, all depending on their life belt.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
When Titanic was sinking, it was strangely beautiful. You had
this huge ship inverting, all lit up against this cold sky,
with all these stars in this water that was just
like glass, and it was an incredible spectacle. And then
of course it broke apart.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
He was a beautiful sight. Then smoke and sparks were
rushing out of her funnel. There must have been an explosion,
but we had heard none. We only saw the big
stream of sparks. The ship was gradually turning her nose,
just like the duck does when it goes down for
a dive.
Speaker 5 (29:51):
The band was still playing. I guess all the band
went down.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
And the sound was like a thousand freight trains crashing,
because everything inside Titanic broke loose when it inverted and
went crashing down. All these big engineers 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.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
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.
I felt, after a little while, like thinking 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
out from the boat and pulled me aboard. It was
(30:37):
our same collapsible. The same crowd was on it.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
He climbs on top of it and lays there, his
feet severely frostbitten, and literally, if anybody moves the wrong way,
they fall off, and they fall 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, Dinghy,
(31:01):
a rowboat turned over and you're laying on top of it,
and you had ten, twelve, fifteen other people laying on
top of it, and you're literally laying on top of
each other because if you move, you fall into the water.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Somebody sat on my legs. There were wedging 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 of shape. I
just came near, but nobody gave them a hand. The
bottom up boat already had more men than it could hold,
and it was sinking.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
And on this boat is really this is a sort
of microcosm of humanity.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
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?
The man who made the suggestion asked what the religion
of the others was. Each man called out his religion,
and it was Catholic, and it was Methodists, and it
was Presbyterian. Was decided that the most appropriate prayer for
all it was the Lord's Prayer. We spoke it over
(32:03):
in chorus, but the man who first suggested that we
pray as the leader.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
So these twenty boats are within calling distance of each other.
When Harold Bride says, I'm the wireless operator, and I
know Carpasia is 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
(32:36):
a lot of evidence of its passing, and it was
just ungodly quiet, And of course Carpasia came an hour
and ten minutes later.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
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, and felt the pain in my feet.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
And these were some of the last people to get
aboard Carpet, and the water 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, and took Carpathia's hold.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
I tried the rope ladder.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
My feet pained badly, but I reached the top and
felt hands reaching out to me. The next thing I knew,
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, and I was hustled down below to the hospital.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
That was early in the day, I guess. Then I
passed out.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Larrence Beasley wrote when they were on Carpathia, 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
(34:04):
of them is of a lifeboat that pulled up to
the side of Carpasia. And these people just look 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
(34:24):
were essentially shell shock. You know, they didn't have that
term yet. Sec term came from World War One, you know,
five years later, when these big shells 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 Carpasia. They took him
into this sort of makeshift hospital area and then he
(34:48):
woke up.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
And it told me that the Carpathia's 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.
Speaker 5 (34:59):
I just worked the splitter never died down. I knew it.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
Suthe the hurt and felt like a tie to the
world of friends and home. How could I take news queries?
Sometimes I'd let a newspaper ask question and get a
long string of 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
(35:24):
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 asked that I
prepare this statement.
Speaker 5 (35:33):
There were maybe one hundred left.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
I would like to send them all because I know
I could get rest easier if I knew those messages
that had gone to the friends waiting for them. But
an ambulance man was waiting with a streatshert, and I
guess I've got to go with him.
Speaker 5 (35:45):
I hope my legs get better soon.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
And of course Harold Bride would go on to love
with his family after this and went back to the
service for a little while, but then he left and
I think he went into business, had a family and
disappeared for in history. Here's the Titanic really, Jack Phillips
and Harold Bride and Captain Rostroum. Captain Rostrom was given
(36:13):
the Congressional Medal of Honor medals from the British Medals
from groups went on to an illustrious career, and these
two pretty young guys put their own lives on the
line and stayed at their post when they could have
left at two am when Captain Smith were leading them,
they stayed all the way to the end and just
kept trying to get somebody there to help them. And
(36:37):
it's only 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 sort of 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 of wireless technology.
(37:00):
And you know, there is a plan. When 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 basically falling
apart and they want to get the set up. And
if there was something embedded in those last coils, those
last electro manitary coils, you know, it would be that
(37:22):
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 this same basic human plea. So really,
I would say Captain Rostrom, Jack Phillips, Harold Bride. They
were the heroes of.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Titanic and a special thanks to William hazel Grove. 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. Story of the RMS Titanic as
(38:02):
told with the lives of Harold Bride and Jack Phillips.
Here on our American Story
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories
to 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 podcasts.
A little known fact about the Titanic is that it
was actually owned.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
By an American.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
JP Morgan up next 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
(00:54):
get into the story.
Speaker 3 (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 the headlines no larger than half
an inch in height. These days were peaceful. It seems
(01:19):
to me that the disaster about to occur was the
event which not only made the world rub its eyes
and awake, but woke it with a start, keeping it
moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since, with less peace, satisfaction,
and happiness in my mind. The world of today awoke
(01:39):
April fifteenth, nineteen twelve, and.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
The night Carpathia came into New York, it's thundering, its
lightning rains coming down the dock in New York Harbor
is just mob or people, thousands of people who don't
know if their husband, wives, daughters have made it or not.
And they see this ship emerging out of the darkness,
brilliantly lit up, and it's met in the harbor by
(02:08):
all these reporters on boats. These reporters literally start throwing
guybulets of money onto the deck of Carpasia, telling in
the past years, 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 and jump
on board too, and they literally get punched and thrown
off because this is the scoop of the century. And
(02:32):
Carpasia pulls up, and of course Google and Marconi is
at the head of the crowd to get on Carpasia
when she pulls in, which has his wireless operator Harold
Bride on board. Everybody wanted to talk to him because
he's the surviving wireless operator. Marconi was a fascinating guy.
(02:58):
Googloe McConney was from Italy and he had a lit
of 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 were iron filings. So
when he sat on an electric signal, the iron filings
(03:18):
jumped 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
his friend received the signal, he shot off his gun.
(03:42):
So he developed this technology that the others had been developing,
but he sort of 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 that things, and so they're in this theater. All
these people are there, and so basically Marconi would walk
(04:05):
around the theater with this box. You know, somebody's manning
the transmitter, and so they'd send off the wireless telegraphy signal.
It would hit the box and it would date, 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, sort of like a most awaiter,
(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 then ships would just disappear.
Nobody knew what happened to him. So everybody's like, no, no, no, no, no,
(04:49):
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
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 across the English Channel.
(05:12):
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 understand 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 it was just brilliantly clear, these singles could bounce
on and on up to two thousand miles. So when
(05:35):
Marconi proved this, this was amazing to people. This was
just groundbreaking because now a ship in the Middle 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.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
YEA.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
So Marconi's waiting to die and a board Carpathia, Harol Cotton,
who was the wireless man on Carpathia, literally keels over
from exhaustion. So they say to Harrold Bride, who who
survives under a lifeboat feeder partly frostbitten. They say, look, well,
you know you've been through helen back, but can you
(06:17):
take over the wireless you only one knows Morse code,
so he does. The first telegram he does 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 Carpasia pulls up and he's literally one of the
(06:38):
first people to get on. He's a rock star by
today's standards. Everybody knows who this guy is. So the
c's part four when he walks on board and he
goes right to the wireless room where Harold Bride is
still working, still send me 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
(06:59):
to the strand hood how where these reporters are there,
and then he sits down and tells them what happened
on Titanic and gives them the story basically of the century.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
I was standing by Phillips telling him to go to
bed when the captain put his head in the cabinet,
he struck an iceberg.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And you're listening to William Hazelgrove tell the story of
the first real 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
(07:42):
us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place
where students study all 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
(08:10):
to our American Stories and our story on the sinking
of the RMS Titanic 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
(08:32):
that helped save some of the Titanic's passengers. Buglio Marcone,
You'll be hearing excerpts of Harold Bride's interview with The New.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
York Times throughout this piece. Let's return to the story.
Begin at the beginning.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
I was born at Nunhead, England, twenty two years ago
and joined the Marconi Forces last July. I first worked
on the Hoverford and then Tania. I joined the Titanic
at Belfast with Jack Phillips.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Jack Phillips and Harrold 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 sort of promotion. He was really leading the
team there, if you will.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
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, but was asleep. I was due
to be up to relieve Phillips earlier than usual.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
These guys are sort of like the computer nerds of today.
It is a young man's game at 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 this big ship, and they really are on
(09:55):
the cutting edge of technology of their time. Ability 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
(10:18):
operators slept in their room. They ate there. They had
no contact with the crew and by the read the
room was called the silent room because had to be
insulated against several things. One was noise coming in, but
two they were using direct current. We use alternating current,
so we didn't electrocute ourselves. Direct current you step it
way up, especially if you've got a broadcast out shoot
(10:40):
out these signals across the Atlantic. The key would literally
crack very loudly, so they had to also muffle that.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
And that reminds me that hadn't been for a lucky thing,
we would have never been able to send any call
for help.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
So before it taking hits the Iceberg, believe it or not,
their wireless set was broken. You know, the day of
April fourteen, We.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Know something was wrong on Sunday and Phillips and I
worked for seven hours to find it. We found a
burned out Secretary at last and repaired it just a
few hours before the iceberg was struck, and they.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Had all these messages piled up. Wireless was really for passengers.
Harold Bride, Jack Phillips did not work for White Star.
They worked for Marconi. And that's really how Marconi made
his money, because you could go send a telegram now
from Titanic, and Titanic had the most powerful wireless set
(11:36):
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, meet you for lunch. Also, what they
could do is they could take information from a shore
station 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
(11:57):
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.
Stewards would take the messages to the room. They've come
out with a message, but it was laborious to send them,
(12:18):
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. They're maybe ten to twelve miles away, and
they've got some messages for titan And so what happens
is while Jack Phillips is the head operator, is trying
(12:39):
to get through these messages, this operator breaks in and
it's sort of like getting 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 Phillip's ears off
with this message saying, hey, I've got some messages for you,
some ice warnings, and Phillips retorts.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
He felt shut up, I'm working Cape Race.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
And so this operator there's only one operator in California,
which again it's ten to twelve miles away, says, you know,
it's been a long day, and he turns his set off,
which is gonna have implications down the line that are amazing.
So now as Titanic steaming towards this iceberg. Yes, ice
warnings have come in. Yes, they've been taken up to
(13:24):
the bridge. Had they been acted on, No, a couple
of them. We're stuck onto a bulletin board. So at
this moment, as they're plunging through the North Atlantic at
twenty four knots, Jack Phillips and Harrold Bride are just
working it, trying to get passing your messages out. It's
bitterly cold, and lookout fleet is up in the crow's
(13:45):
nest looking for icebergs. Also, it's incredibly calm. The North
Atlantic is usually not this calmp but it's a mill pile.
It's like glass. So the stars are all reflecting off
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
(14:08):
is very much evidence that you're entering into an ice field.
Because those icebergs turn it's sort of super cold, they
just sort of bring the temperature down around them. So
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
(14:31):
a very very long time of return. When she finally does,
they feel like they missed her. But they stop the ship.
Captain Smith, who's in his stateroom, comes bursting out. What happened?
The water tight doors are closed. Now. The watertight doors
are the reason the Titanic is called unsinkable. What are they?
(14:53):
They're these big steel doors that take every bulkhead and
seal it off. Now, in theory, if a bullheads sealed off,
the water could only come in. So far with Titanic,
the bulkheads only go up to eedeck. That means that
this water coming in is going to fill up the
first compartment and then go up and over into the
(15:14):
second compartment. It 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
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,
(15:39):
so now the weight of the water thirty nine thousand
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
(16:00):
going along like nothing's wrong. Also, there is no PA,
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 as to ever lower them,
mostly though people don't know. So how do you find out? Well,
the first class, the steward comes up, so I say, sir,
(16:22):
would you might put it on your life jacket and
coming up top of which is not a big thing,
but we might get in the boats, So they do.
How to the third class steerish famously in the bottom
of the ship find out maybe somebody yells down the hallway.
Most of them don't speak English anyway, and by the
way they're down in this labyrinth of a ship, I
have no idea how to get up there. So it's
(16:42):
all against them right away. And famously, in the movie,
we all see the block doorways, passages and we think oh,
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
(17:04):
and probably ten thousand dollars dinner clothes going to dinner.
And so you had that kind of money with people
who literally own just the clothes on their back down
in steerage, coming to America for a better life.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And you're listening to William Hazelgrove tell the remarkable story
of the sinking of the Titanic through what we would
consider now to be tech geeks, the two wireless operators
who were working with the cutting 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.
(17:44):
When we come back more of this storytelling again from
the wireless technicians point of view here on our American story,
(18:08):
and we returned to our American stories and our story
on the sinking of the RMS 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 Captain E. J. Smith,
(18:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Let's talk about Captain Smith. Well, 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 he's never had a tragedy like this. In fact,
he just gave an interview before the cruise saying, you
know what ship sinking thing in the past. Technology is
to advance for that. So he's done, and he goes
(19:05):
down to the wireless room, the silent room.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
And the captain put his head in the cabin and said,
we've struck an iceberg, and I'm having an inspection made
to tell what it has done for us. You better
get ready to send it a call for assistance, but
don't send it until I tell you to. 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 his
(19:28):
head in the door. We call stress in Philips asked
the regulation international call for help.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
That's that. Then the captain was gone. Philps began to
send CQD.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
He flashed away at it, and we joked while he
did so.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Now CQD means basically, listen up for what's coming next,
an easy translation that has come quick distress. It's not
literally that's what it means, but basically that's what it says.
Now at that moment, you're sending out this message, right,
So Aitanic has four big antennas over the top of
the phone, so it only exists in one photo. And
(20:06):
they start beaming these things out, shooting them out over
the North Atlantic at night, which is the best time.
And what's it say. It says, have struck an Iceberg,
need a media assistance longitude latitude, over and over and over.
This is what 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
(20:29):
somebody's sending something out, you can't hear what's coming back.
It's like early early fans, when the early phones out
in rural circuits, people had to literally wait for the
farm down the road to get off so they could
get on, or they could 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
(20:50):
to take them faith mostly that people are hearing him.
And he's just repeatedly sending these signals out to any ship.
So what this is me? What are they helping for?
Helping a ship will get this turn 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.
(21:16):
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.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Then the captain came back, what are you sending? Yes,
eqd bhilps your plan. The humor of the situation appealed
to me, and I cut him with a little remark
that made us all laugh, including the captain. Then sos
I said, it's the new call and it maybe our
last chance to send it. Philps with the laugh changed
the signal the SOS.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Now they're sending both, and first it comes out, have
struck an Iceberg need imediate 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,
(22:06):
and that is way beyond has struck an Iceberg need assistance.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Many ships begin to answer our signals, the Frankfurt, the Baltic.
Then the Carpathia answered our signal. We told her our
position and told her that we were sinking by the head.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
So Harold Cotton, who's aboard the Carpathia, who's the wireless operator,
he actually knows Jack Phillips, and they get the message
late almost twelve thirty.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
The operator on the Carpathia went to tell the captain
and in five minutes returned and told us that the
captain of the Carpathia was putting about and heading for us.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Captain Rostrum's the captain. He was known as the electric
spark among this men. 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
message from Titanic saying come quick, distressed, he too is
(23:00):
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.
He's gonna put all their lives 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
(23:22):
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
are steam driven ships, so the big pistons, right, So
the more steam, the faster they go, turns the carpasier around,
(23:44):
uncovers his lifeboat, sets up a hospital triage 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
so fast that the passengers who are now because they
don't have any heat anymore, are coming out and saying,
we think Carpasia is on fire, and he's going towards
(24:06):
the shore to run on the ground. This is what
ship would do if they caught fire. They'd make a
beeline for the shore and just try and run the
ship aground. Because nobody's told them what they're really doing.
So Rostrum, who's just hell bent on getting there, immediately
becomes their best shot at being rescued, even though he's
fifty miles away.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
While we continue to send three few minutes, Philips will
send me to the capital. Of little messages, they were
merely telling how the Carpathia was coming her away and
gave her speed. I noticed as I came back from
one trip that they were putting women in children in lifeboats.
I noticed that the list board was increasing, and Phillips
told me that the wireless was growing weaker.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
So at two am, Captain Smith comes into the silent room.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
And he said, men, you have done your full duty.
You can do no more. Bend in your cabin. Now
it's every man for himself. You look out for yourselves.
I release you. That's the way of it. At this
kind of time, every man for himself.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
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 though it's weak. It's sort of
like rural circuits getting fainter, you know. They turned kind
of almost rad the lights, but still enough to try
(25:33):
and get out these signals. So they stay there right
up until two twenty when she's going down.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Phillips clung on, sending, sending. He clung 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 seems, standing
there thinking to his work while everybody else was raging about.
(26:04):
I will never live to forget the work of Phillips
for the last awful fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Another strange moment is a stoker comes in and these
are one of the guy's shovels. Colt and tries to
steal Jack phillips jacket from him.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
While he works. Something happened that I hate to tell about.
I was back in my room getting Phillips his money
for him, and as I looked at the door, I
saw a stoker or somebody from below decks leaning over
Phillips from behind. He was too busy to notice what
the man was doing. The man was slipping a life
belt 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 ahold of. I
(26:43):
remember in a flash the way Phillips had clung on.
How I had to fix the life belt 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 passionate and not let that man die decent tailor's death.
I wish he might have stretched rope or walked a plank.
I did. I hope I had finished him. I don't know.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
We left him on the floor of the wireless room
and he was not moving.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
And you're listening to William Hazelgrove tell the story of
the sinking the RMS Titanic when we come back the
end of this remarkable story, the sinking of the Titanic
here on our American story, and we returned to our
(27:38):
American stories in our final portion of our story on
the sinking of the Titanic. They're 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 continued to send desperate messages for help. Eventually, both
(28:02):
Harold Bride and Jack Phillips would leave the room in
search for some salvation. Here again is William hazel Grove.
Let's continue with the.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Story from aft. Can of tunes of the band It's
a ragtime tune. I don't know what Philips ran aft,
and that was the last time I ever saw him alive.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Basically, all order broke down in Titanic. They run out
of the wireless room and one remaining boat called an
ingle Heart, which is collapsible. Some men were trying to
get it off the roof.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
I guess there wasn't a sailor in the crowd. They
couldn't do.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
It, and the way most people end up in the water,
and Titanic was a final wave came over this ship.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
A big wave carried the boat off. I had hold
of an orelock and I went off with it.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Harold Bride ends up under a lifeboat overturned in the water, and.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
I remember realizing I was wet through and whatever happened,
I must not breathe, for I was underwater.
Speaker 5 (28:58):
I knew I had to fight for it.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
And 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, all depending on their life belt.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
When Titanic was sinking, it was strangely beautiful. You had
this huge ship inverting, all lit up against this cold sky,
with all these stars in this water that was just
like glass, and it was an incredible spectacle. And then
of course it broke apart.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
He was a beautiful sight. Then smoke and sparks were
rushing out of her funnel. There must have been an explosion,
but we had heard none. We only saw the big
stream of sparks. The ship was gradually turning her nose,
just like the duck does when it goes down for
a dive.
Speaker 5 (29:51):
The band was still playing. I guess all the band
went down.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
And the sound was like a thousand freight trains crashing,
because everything inside Titanic broke loose when it inverted and
went crashing down. All these big engineers 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.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
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.
I felt, after a little while, like thinking 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
out from the boat and pulled me aboard. It was
(30:37):
our same collapsible. The same crowd was on it.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
He climbs on top of it and lays there, his
feet severely frostbitten, and literally, if anybody moves the wrong way,
they fall off, and they fall 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, Dinghy,
(31:01):
a rowboat turned over and you're laying on top of it,
and you had ten, twelve, fifteen other people laying on
top of it, and you're literally laying on top of
each other because if you move, you fall into the water.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Somebody sat on my legs. There were wedging 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 of shape. I
just came near, but nobody gave them a hand. The
bottom up boat already had more men than it could hold,
and it was sinking.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
And on this boat is really this is a sort
of microcosm of humanity.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
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?
The man who made the suggestion asked what the religion
of the others was. Each man called out his religion,
and it was Catholic, and it was Methodists, and it
was Presbyterian. Was decided that the most appropriate prayer for
all it was the Lord's Prayer. We spoke it over
(32:03):
in chorus, but the man who first suggested that we
pray as the leader.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
So these twenty boats are within calling distance of each other.
When Harold Bride says, I'm the wireless operator, and I
know Carpasia is 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
(32:36):
a lot of evidence of its passing, and it was
just ungodly quiet, And of course Carpasia came an hour
and ten minutes later.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
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, and felt the pain in my feet.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
And these were some of the last people to get
aboard Carpet, and the water 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, and took Carpathia's hold.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
I tried the rope ladder.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
My feet pained badly, but I reached the top and
felt hands reaching out to me. The next thing I knew,
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, and I was hustled down below to the hospital.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
That was early in the day, I guess. Then I
passed out.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Larrence Beasley wrote when they were on Carpathia, 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
(34:04):
of them is of a lifeboat that pulled up to
the side of Carpasia. And these people just look 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
(34:24):
were essentially shell shock. You know, they didn't have that
term yet. Sec term came from World War One, you know,
five years later, when these big shells 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 Carpasia. They took him
into this sort of makeshift hospital area and then he
(34:48):
woke up.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
And it told me that the Carpathia's 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.
Speaker 5 (34:59):
I just worked the splitter never died down. I knew it.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
Suthe the hurt and felt like a tie to the
world of friends and home. How could I take news queries?
Sometimes I'd let a newspaper ask question and get a
long string of 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
(35:24):
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 asked that I
prepare this statement.
Speaker 5 (35:33):
There were maybe one hundred left.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
I would like to send them all because I know
I could get rest easier if I knew those messages
that had gone to the friends waiting for them. But
an ambulance man was waiting with a streatshert, and I
guess I've got to go with him.
Speaker 5 (35:45):
I hope my legs get better soon.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
And of course Harold Bride would go on to love
with his family after this and went back to the
service for a little while, but then he left and
I think he went into business, had a family and
disappeared for in history. Here's the Titanic really, Jack Phillips
and Harold Bride and Captain Rostroum. Captain Rostrom was given
(36:13):
the Congressional Medal of Honor medals from the British Medals
from groups went on to an illustrious career, and these
two pretty young guys put their own lives on the
line and stayed at their post when they could have
left at two am when Captain Smith were leading them,
they stayed all the way to the end and just
kept trying to get somebody there to help them. And
(36:37):
it's only 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 sort of 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 of wireless technology.
(37:00):
And you know, there is a plan. When 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 basically falling
apart and they want to get the set up. And
if there was something embedded in those last coils, those
last electro manitary coils, you know, it would be that
(37:22):
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 this same basic human plea. So really,
I would say Captain Rostrom, Jack Phillips, Harold Bride. They
were the heroes of.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Titanic and a special thanks to William hazel Grove. 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. Story of the RMS Titanic as
(38:02):
told with the lives of Harold Bride and Jack Phillips.
Here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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