by Jim DeManche ⚓️☕️
Titanic's Marconi Wireless setup was actually broken (4 days) into the voyage. Marconi equipment was super high tech at the time and only licensed technicians were authorized to fix them. Protocol at the time was if the set broke you waited until the ship got to port and then it would be repaired.
So what would history be like today had wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride not been able to repair it, and TITANIC still struck the iceberg? Let me take a few moments to speculate on the ‘alternative reality’ had the wireless not been working.
Captain E.J. Smith ordered signal rockets to be fired when he became convinced the TITANIC was sinking. Without a working wireless however, he could not order the broadcast or transmit either ‘CQD’ or the new ‘SOS’ signal to other ships. This key factor would be the pivotal point that changes all we know today.
The SS CALIFORNIAN would still not have responded to TITANIC’s distress rockets. A decision that to this day casts debate on the judgement of Capt. Stanley Lord. The heroic actions of the SS CARPATHIA and Capt. Arthur Rostron along with his crew would simply not have happened. The RMS OLYMPIC and Capt. Herbert J. Haddock would never have known on the night of April 14/15, 1912 that TITANIC was doomed!
All those passengers and crew who managed to board a life boat; including J. Bruce Ismay, would be hopelessly adrift in a freezing sea without any other ship in the general area aware! Those who were expecting the TITANIC to arrive in New York would slowly begin to realize that something has happened. No one on the east coast of America or Canada would have any idea the TITANIC was now at the bottom of the sea with the bodies of the lost.
The lifeboats had no supply of food and water. Those in lifeboats would soon start succumbing to hypothermia; the weakest dying first followed by the remainder. Bodies would simply and sadly be cast overboard into the oblivion of the sea, except for those who died in the lifeboats at the very end.
How long would it take before family, friends, and others began what we call today a “Search and Rescue” mission? The TITANIC was not expected in New York until April 17th., two days after she sank! The accepted belief by most was that TITANIC was “unsinkable”, and considered to be her own lifeboat in any situation. My personal belief is that a day or two would pass before White Star Line, the Newspapers, and other interested parties would take any kind of action. Those stranded in lifeboats would already have been adrift for approximately four days!
In the course of time people would begin to accept the hard truth that the TITANIC had foundered. But where?…when?…why?…did anyone survive?…and if so who??…where would anyone look?
Eventually after days or maybe even weeks some of the lifeboats would be discovered by passing ships with corpses inside. I sadly believe there would not be any survivors to tell the tragic story. It would remain a mystery to this very day.
fini ~
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