The Little Book of Titanic by Sue Todd

Author:Sue Todd [Todd, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: G2 Rights Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

*An artist’s impression of Captain Smith issuing his ‘Last Orders’.

On his return, shortly after midnight, Boxhall was instructed to calculate the ship’s position, which he did using the position calculated by Lightoller from the stars at 7.30pm. This was the notorious 41°46’ N/50°14’ W, some 13 miles from the ship’s actual location at 41°43’ N/49°56’ W. The inaccuracy could have been caused by a number of factors and is probably explicable under the circumstances in which Boxhall was operating. Factors leading to the error may include overestimating the ship’s speed by half a knot (22 knots as opposed to the actual speed of 21.5 knots), the subtle changes required to the ship’s clock during the period from 7.30pm onwards and the one-knot southerly current through which the Titanic was passing. Whatever the cause, the erroneous information was soon being transmitted by Jack Phillips and Harold Bride from the wireless room as they started to issue ‘CQD’ messages (the distress code used by Marconi operators) at around 12.15am. ‘SOS’ had been introduced only in 1907, following the International Conference on Wireless Communication at Sea held in Berlin in 1906, and was not yet in universal use. In a subsequent article in the New York Times, Bride reported a conversation in the wireless room when he suggested, ‘Send SOS; it’s the new call, and it may be your last chance to send it.’ The Titanic later sent out a mixture of CQD and SOS signals.

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