PHOTOS: RMS TITANIC 112 YEARS ON

The man who helped save 700.

Forget Di Caprio and Winslet. On this day 112 years ago, RMS Titanic sailed away from Queenstown (Cobh) on the south coast of Ireland and never saw land again. The first person I ever researched, ever stalked, first rabbit hole I ever went down following was John George Phillips, the ship’s senior wireless operator. He was not a fictional character. He was from Surrey, just up the road from me, and today is his birthday.

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He always went by ‘Jack,’ and on 11th April 1912 he turned 25. He mostly worked overnight on the ship, because that’s when the range was at its best. More than anything, the Marconi installation was there to make money. The whole idea of using it to communicate with other ships about safety measures was an afterthought. Passengers handed in their messages to the purser and their cash for the novelty of sending a note from the middle of the Atlantic. These were the priority, and Jack was busy on the maiden voyage.

We know that he stayed almost to the end, and that when he abandoned the ship, he may have made it to collapsible lifeboat B, but it was upturned and if that is the case, he didn’t hang on. His body was never recovered.

Jack was born in Farncombe, which runs up against Godalming, in 1887. His parents were in their forties, and must have given up on the idea of another son. They’d had one once, but he died in infancy. Jack came along when his twin sisters, Elsie and Ethel, were 13.

Jack was born above his parents drapers shop, but the building has gone. These new shops are on the same site.

Jack was a smart kid. This part of a pub used to be a tiny grammar school in Godalming, and he went here. He was always interested in telegraphy, and his first job was for the local post office close by.

He must have been highly rated by his employers to be in charge on Titanic. He oversaw one other operator, but this was showy. Most ships had one, and the wireless was out of operation when they were asleep.

After the alarm was raised in the early hours of 15th April, the ship already dying, Jack began by sending the established CQD signal. At some point he switched, to SOS. It was far easier to send in Morse Code.

Instead of  — * — * — — * — —* *

He was now sending * * * — — —     * * *

A brick cloister and memorial garden in his hometown of Godalming is the largest Titanic memorial in the world dedicated to a single person. The plaque commemrates his actions on 15th April 1912.

Jack Phillips wasn’t quite the first to use SOS, but close. As a result of Jack’s efforts, Titanic’s distress call was picked up by another young operator, Harold Thomas Cottam, on Cunard’s Carpathia.

His actions saved more than 700 people, but not Mr and Mrs. Phillips’s only son.

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My ginger boaty bro Chris Sams has taken another aspect of the wireless story and investigated whether or not criticism of the Californian, which was much closer to the scene of the disaster, really could have done more. It’ll be out on the anniversary of the sinking on Monday but subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it:

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