Rush aid."
Seaward and landward, J. G. Phillips, the
Titanic's wireless man, had hurled the appeal for help. By fits
and starts--for the wireless was working unevenly and blurringly
--Phillips reached out to the world, crying the Titanic's
peril. A word or two, scattered phrases, now and then a
connected sentence, made up the message that sent a thrill
of apprehension for a thousand miles east, west and south
of the doomed liner.
The early despatches from St. John's, Cape Race, and
Montreal, told graphic tales of the race to reach the Titanic,
the wireless appeals for help, the interruption of the calls, then
what appeared to be a successful conclusion of the race when
the Virginian was reported as having reached the giant liner.
MANY LINES HEAR THE CALL
Other rushing liners besides the Virginian heard the call
and became on the instant something more than cargo carriers
and passenger greyhounds. The big Baltic, 200 miles to the
eastward and westbound, turned again to save life, as she did
when her sister of the White Star fleet, the Republic, was
cut down in a fog in January, 1909. The Titanic's mate, the
Olympic, the mightiest of the seagoers save the Titanic herself,
turned in her tracks.
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