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Show FALL 2013 UHQ pp 304-385_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 9/16/13 1:25 PM Page 344 UTAh hISTOrICAL QUArTErLy While Harold Bride’s eyewitness account of the Titanic disaster continues to be critical to understanding what happened that fateful night in April 1912, Isaac Russell’s preparation of that account has until now been largely forgotten. As he said in his unpublished manuscript, “[The Nabobs of the Times] did not ask their reporter, either, so none of them knew until this writing, how [the Bride account] all really came about.”65 The same is true of historians who have credited Carr Van Anda for masterminding Marconi’s visit to the Carpathia, who accused Bride and the Marconi Company of withholding information to preserve the value of the wireless operators’ stories, and who even incorrectly identified the Times reporter who accompanied the inventor onto the ship. Russell’s recounting of the extraordinary tale of how the account was obtained corrects these mistakes. When Russell and Marconi interviewed Bride, they learned that the wireless operator was not refusing to respond to incoming messages to preserve a likely fee for his story; rather, the traumatized twenty-two-yearold was so overwrought by what he had seen that he could not stop sending messages from his fellow Titanic survivors who were writing to reassure frightened relatives and loved ones that they were alive. Russell’s account is also contrary to the legend that has been created about Carr Van Anda’s supposed grand plan to get Marconi onto the Carpathia. It was not Van Anda at all. As Tifft and Jones wrote, it was “luck and an enterprising reporter” who got the story, and that enterprising reporter was Isaac Russell.66 This takes little away from the Times’ managing editor’s masterful oversight of the paper’s coverage of one of the greatest news stories of the twentieth century, but it does provide an important correction. Russell’s descendants and relatives are justifiably proud of the remarkable role he played.67 65 Russell, unpublished manuscript on his visit with Harold Bride, 10, Russell Papers. Tifft and Jones, The Trust, 805. 67 A photograph of Isaac Russell at the J. Willard Marriott Library has the following handwritten note on the back: “Isaac Russell, reporter for the New York Times, ones [sic] of whose reports, on the sinking of the Titanic, during which he worked with Marconi, inventor of wireless telegraphy, aboard the ship the Carpathia, won honors for him.” Samuel Russell Photograph Collection, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. In an article about Russell’s great-grandson, Robbie Russell, the reporter described what is certainly a family tradition he heard from Robbie, “Robbie’s great-grandfather is Isaac Russell, a former New York Times reporter who, legend has it, was the first to write about the sinking of the Titanic.” Steven Goff, “Getting to Know D.C. United’s Robbie Russell,” accessed July 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/soccer-insider/post/getting-to-know-dcuniteds-robbie-russell/2012/01/26/glQAKSvfTQ_blog.html. 66 344 |
