Marconi telegram from OLYMPIC to CARPATHIA

telegram

A Marconi wireless telegram from Captain Haddock of the OLYMPIC to Captain Arthur Rostron of the CARPATHIA, sent at 4.50 EST on April 15, 1912 about the TITANIC disaster. Haddock asks: "Can you give me names survivors to forward." When it received TITANIC's first distress signal earlier that morning the OLYMPIC, the TITANIC's sister ship, was about 500 miles southwest of TITANIC, heading eastbound from New York to England. Captain Haddock immediately fired up all boilers and raced towards the coordinates, but he was much further away than several other ships. The CARPATHIA reached the site first, finding the TITANIC gone, and it rescued the survivors in lifeboats. The OLYMMPIC was still far away but was, however, in place to communicate with the CARPATHIA and pass on details to the White Star office in New York, which CARPATHIA was too far from shore to do directly. This is one of a string of communications that afternoon. Haddock originally intended to meet the CARPATHIA to transfer over the survivors, but Captain Rostron dissuaded him, suggesting it would be traumatic for TITANIC survivors to encounter another ship that looked just like the one that had sunk. Once they agreed a transfer would be a bad idea, Haddock sent this message asking for the names of the survivors. Over the next few hours, CARPATHIA reported the deaths of many of the crew and shared the names of the survivors who were safe aboard CARPATHIA. Captain Rostron refused to respond to any press inquiries, reserving the telegram's services for the survivor reports and passengers' private communications. He famously did not even respond to President Taft, who sent a telegram asking about his friend and advisor Archibald Butt. The initial confusion about the ship's fate had turned to a media frenzy by the time the CARPATHIA arrived in New York three days later.