OF THE WIRELESS--OTHER SHIPS ALTER THEIR COURSE--RESCUERS ON
THE WAY

"WE have struck an iceberg. Badly damaged. 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. All along the northern lane the miracle of the
wireless worked for the distressed and sinking White Star ship. The
Hamburg-American Cincinnati, the Parisian from Glasgow, the North
German Lloyd Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm, the Hamburg-American liners Prinz
Adelbert and Amerika, all heard the C. Q. D. and the rapid, condensed
explanation of what had happened.

VIRGINIAN IN DESPERATE HASTE

But the Virginian was nearest, barely 170 miles away, and was the first
to know of the Titanic's danger. She went about and headed under
forced draught for the spot indicated in one of the last of Phillips'
messages--latitude 41.46 N. and longitude 50.14 W. She is a fast
ship, the Allan liner, and her wireless has told the story of how she
stretched through the night to get up to the Titanic in time. There was
need for all the power of her engines and all the experience and skill
of her captain. The final fluttering Marconigrams that were released
from the Titanic made it certain that the great ship with 2340 souls
aboard was filling and in desperate peril.

Further out at sea was the Cunarder, Carpathia, which left New York