|
|
|
The History - April 14, 1912
|
 On
Sunday, April 14, the fourth day of the Titanic's maiden
voyage, the sea was exceptionally calm but the weather had turned
cold. At 10:30 that morning, in the first-class dining room, Captain
Smith presided over Divine Services, attended by all classes of passengers.
Normally, Sunday services would be followed by a lifeboat drill for
passengers and crew, but for some reason, that day Captain Smith opted
not to hold a lifeboat drill on the Titanic. |
While passengers enjoyed luncheon and spent much of the day indoors
because of the cold weather, the Titanic's Marconi operators,
John Phillips and his assistant Harold Bride, were very busy transmitting
private telegrams for passengers.   A
backlog accumulated when the ship's wireless system malfunctioned
on the night of Friday, April 12. Still, whenever an ice warning came
across the telegraph, Phillips and Bride halted their private transmissions
and took the warning to the captain and ship's officers.
Before 2:00 p.m. that day, they had received three ice alerts, from
the Caronia, the Noordam and the Baltic.
When Captain Smith received the Baltic's warning, he handed it to
White Star Chairman J. Bruce Ismay. Ismay put the message in his pocket
and later remarked to a passenger, Mrs. Arthur Ryerson, that he would
let the Titanic "run a great deal faster and get out
of" the ice field. Yet another ice warning came in at 5:03 p.m.
from the ocean liner Amerika. |
 At
7:30 p.m., Phillips and Bride intercepted an iceberg alert from the
nearby Californian. Captain Smith, however, never received
the Californian's warning, because he was in the Titanic's
restaurant at a dinner party hosted by the Wideners. Just before 9:00
p.m., the Captain left the party and stopped in at the bridge, where
he instructed Second Officer Charles Lightoller to inform him if sea
conditions became hazy. At 9:40 p.m., another ship, the Mesaba,
telegraphed an ice warning. Phillips, however, was preoccupied with
private transmissions; by 11:00 p.m., he had still not delivered the
Mesaba's warning to the Titanic's captain and crew,
and he scolded the California's wireless operator for interrupting
him with another ice warning. |
|
|
