The Other Side of the Night by Daniel Allen Butler Read Free Book Online Page A

demanding. Once this was accomplished, the crewmen would climb out of the boat, swing it back inboard, pull the cover back on and return to work. On the Carpathia, as on almost every other liner on the North Atlantic, only the crew had assigned boat stations, and these were merely assignments telling the crewmen which boats they were supposed to assist in loading and lowering. As for the passengers, there were no lifeboat assignments of any kind.
    At noon, on Sunday as on every day, the captain and his officers gathered on the starboard bridge wing, each with a sextant in hand. They would take a series of sun sightings to work out the ship’s precise position, which would then be recorded in the ship’s log, along with the distance covered in the previous twenty-four hours. Like most of her contemporaries, the Carpathia held a sweepstakes for the passengers to wager on the day’s run. Once the noon sun-sightings were taken and the distance known, the ship’s siren blew and those passengers who had placed wagers would gather in the First Class Lounge to await the results. On the larger express liners, the winnings in the sweepstakes could amount to several hundred pounds (or dollars) but that of the Carpathia was, of course, far more modest. Still, it was always exciting, particularly for a passage which promised to have very little if anything in the way of other excitement.
    In the wireless office, which was located in the after superstructure, above the Second Class smoking room, young Harold Cottam was being kept quite busy. Just 21 years old, Cottam had been the youngest graduate ever of the Marconi School, having completed the course at the age of 17. He had to wait almost three years before having the chance to go to sea, as regulations forbid any operator younger than 21 to be posted to a ship, though sometimes the officials would look the other way when a particularly talented but under-age applicant came forward; in the meantime he worked mainly as a shore operator in Liverpool. Then came his first posting at sea, aboard the White Star Line’s Medic , on the Australian run. After four months on the Medic , he joined the Carpathia in February, and quickly became comfortable aboard her, for Rostron was a good skipper who had a better grasp of the realities of wireless than many of his contemporaries.
    Wireless, while becoming more reliable with every passing year, was still a far-from-perfected technology in 1912. Ranges were still limited, the performance of some sets was marginal, and there was a shortage of skilled operators; but the rapidly growing number of conventions and etiquette were adding a much needed measure of discipline to wireless communications. What was most noticeably lacking was standardization—there were a half dozen types of equipment; two different Morse codes, American and International; no regulations concerning the hours wireless watch was to be kept; and no definite order in the ships’ crew organizations as to where the wireless operator belonged. This was due, of course, to the fact that the wireless operators did not actually work for the shipping line that owned their particular vessel, but were actually employees of British Marconi.
    Another problem was the sheer volume of work which sometimes beset the operators. Passengers seemed to take an almost childish delight in sending messages to friends and families from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, a good deal of any Marconi man’s time was taken up with private messages that had nothing to do with the ship itself, mostly of the “Having a wonderful time, wish you were here” variety. These messages had to be handled, since the passengers were paying for the service, but they tended to cause the work to get piled up, and occasionally interfered with traffic important to the safe navigation of the ship. This could present a problem on a smaller vessel like the Carpathia, which only had one operator, who typically