The Loss of the S. S. Titanic: Its Story and Its LessonsBeesley, Lawrence
History
The Loss of the S. S. Titanic: Its Story and Its Lessons
Beesley, Lawrence
Shipwrecks -- North Atlantic Ocean; Titanic (Steamship)
At present the receiving apparatus is fixed on only some 650 steamers
of the merchant marine, these being mostly the first-class passenger
liners. There is no question that it should be installed, along with
wireless apparatus, on every ship of over 1000 tons gross tonnage.
Equally important is the provision of signalling apparatus on board
ships: it is obviously just as necessary to transmit a signal as to
receive one; but at present the sending of signals from ships has not
been perfected. The invention of signal-transmitting apparatus to be
used while the ship is under way is as yet in the experimental stage;
but while she is at rest a bell similar to those used by lighthouses
can be sunk over her side and rung by hand with exactly the same
effect. But liners are not provided with them (they cost only 60 Pounds!).
As mentioned before, with another 60 Pounds spent on the Republic's
equipment, the Baltic could have picked up her bell and steered direct
to her--just as they both heard the bell of Nantucket Lightship.
Again, if the Titanic had been provided with a bell and the
Californian with receiving apparatus,--neither of them was,--the
officer on the bridge could have heard the signals from the telephones
near.
A smaller size for use in lifeboats is provided, and would be heard by
receiving apparatus for approximately five miles. If we had hung one
of these bells over the side of the lifeboats afloat that night we
should have been free from the anxiety of being run down as we lay
across the Carpathia's path, without a light. Or if we had gone adrift
in a dense fog and wandered miles apart from each other on the sea (as
we inevitably should have done), the Carpathia could still have picked
up each boat individually by means of the bell signal.
In those ships fitted with receiving apparatus, at least one officer
is obliged to understand the working of the apparatus: a very wise
precaution, and, as suggested above, one that should be taken with
respect to wireless apparatus also.
It was a very great pleasure to me to see all this apparatus in
manufacture and in use at one of the principal submarine signalling
works in America and to hear some of the remarkable stories of its
value in actual practice. I was struck by the aptness of the motto
adopted by them--"De profundis clamavi"--in relation to the Titanic's
end and the calls of our passengers from the sea when she sank. "Out
of the deep have I called unto Thee" is indeed a suitable motto for
those who are doing all they can to prevent such calls arising from
their fellow men and women "out of the deep."
_Fixing of steamship routes_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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