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Show FALL 2013 UHQ pp 304-385_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 9/16/13 1:25 PM Page 337 hArOLD BrIDE INTErVIEW could provide any support. The Carpathia then answered the Titanic’s distress call, and just then Bride could “observe a distinct list forward” of the Titanic. Phillips wired the Carpathia operator, giving their position and indicating that “we were sinking by the head.” Five minutes later, Phillips and Bride received word that the captain of the Carpathia had ordered his ship to change its direction and head for the Titanic.38 Phillips instructed Bride to run to Smith and inform him of what the Carpathia was doing. Bride “went through an awful mess of people to his cabin. The decks were full of scrambling men and women.” Every few minutes thereafter, Bride made a trip to the captain’s cabin, bringing reports of the Carpathia’s position and its speed as it steamed toward the Titanic. As he returned to the wireless cabin on one of these trips, Bride noticed that women and children were being loaded into lifeboats and that the ship’s “list forward was increasing.” Meanwhile, the wireless was growing weaker. The captain informed the operators that the engine rooms were taking on water and that the dynamos—which powered the ship’s electricity and therefore its wireless operation—likely would not last much longer. Phillips sent this message to the Carpathia, indicating, essentially, that the Titanic might not be able to send many more messages.39 Bride explained to Russell and Marconi how Phillips’s persistence left him awestruck. Bride related, “He was a brave man. I learned to reverence him that night and I suddenly felt for him a great reverence to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about. I will never live to forget the work of Phillips for that last fifteen minutes.” Bride, remembering that each crew member had a life belt, retrieved not only his life belt, but Phillips’s also. He also picked up boots and an overcoat for each of them. Phillips was still sending messages to the Carpathia to let it know the Titanic’s status and position. Phillips also began to receive messages from the Olympic, the Titanic’s sister White Line ship, which was then returning to England from New York.40 Phillips asked Bride to see if any lifeboats remained. Bride saw one last collapsible lifeboat and helped boost it down to the deck. A number of people nearby scrambled into this final lifeboat, while Bride returned to Phillips’s side. Smith stopped by, telling them that they had done their “full duty” and instructing them to abandon their cabin. Still, Phillips hung on, continuing to send messages. Bride went back to the bedroom of the operators to retrieve their money, in case they survived the sinking of the ship. As he returned, a large man, a “stoker from below decks” was slipping Phillips’s lifebelt off the courageous wireless operator. Harold Bride, who by his own account was “very small,” “suddenly felt a passion not to let that man die a decent sailor’s death. I wished he might have stretched rope or 38 Ibid. Ibid. 40 Ibid. The Olympic was too far away to render any aid to the Titanic. 39 337 |
