Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

LEAVING THEIR MONUMENTS IN THE ETERNAL ETHER Stories of Radio Men at Sea By PARKHURST WHITNEY SOMEWHERE in the Atlantic seven hundred miles off Cape Race lies the . body of the wireless operator of the f little Norwegian freighter Grontoft, lately bound from Norfolk to Esbjerg. With him lie the bodies of the other nineteen members of the crew. His name is unknown; but what he said while his wireless still crackled, the manner in which he met his fate, is bound to live in the annals of the sea. He was of the pure breed of men who take their chances with the gods of the storm. One of the fiercest gales of a wild winter was turning the Atlantic on end one day last March as the Baltic liner Esthonia labored westward toward Cape Race. Great waves were burying liners under mountains of water. Two hundred miles westward from the Esthonia, the Cunarder Cameronia had just been raked fore and aft by the largest wave that Captain Blakie had seen in his thirtyfive years at sea — a wave forty feet high and three hundred feet broad from trough to trough. It was that sort of day. In the wireless room of the Esthonia, Edward Hanson, the operator, sat braced at his desk listening to the sputtering of other wireless operators as they retailed astounding details of the size and volume of the waves that were sweeping over their ships. At lo o'clock in the morning Hanson picked up an SOS. It was from the freighter Grontoft. The call came in the usual form, giving, as regulations specify, the position of the ship, which was forty-eight miles northeast of the Esthonia. This done, the operator aboard the freighter added : "God pity the boys at sea on such a night as this. The old man thinks it might breeze up by night." There was a pause and Hanson's apparatus flashed back a response to the call. Then he dropped his receiver and notified Captain Hans Jorgenson, of the Esthonia. The Cam eronia had also picked up the appeal for help, but she was two hundred miles away. It was up to the Esthonia and Captain Jorgenson didn't falter, though his ship dropped sickeningly between two great walls of water as she put about. She trembled under the shock of a broadside of water and edged shivering into the wind as the screw raced and a huge comber heaved at her keel. "Tell him," said Captain Jorgenson, "that we are on our way." Hanson went back to the wireless room and sent the cheering message. The Esthonia's engines were put under forced draught, but such was the power of wind and wave on that day that she only made four miles in the first hour. At times her screw was hoisted clear of the water. Another SOS came from the Grontoft. At the end the operator tacked on his usual cheerful, ironic observations. "Well," he said, "the steward is making sandwiches for the lifeboats. Looks like we were going on a picnic." The picnic to which he referred was a gale in which no small boat could survive, even if it should happen to drop right side up from the davits. Hanson sent an encouraging message as the Esthonia drove on, picking up a little speed as she headed into the wind. Half an hour later the Grontoft operator sent out another of his cool comments. His ship was doomed, and so were the men aboard her, but he chose to jest about it as usual. "The old wagon has a list like a run down heel," he said. "This is no weather to be out without an umbrella." " Hold on, we'll be alongside soon," Hanson flashed back. Then for a time there was silence while Hanson waited and other operators queried Hanson as to what he thought his ship could do even if she did come alongside the freighter. Hanson paid no attention to these messages; he was waiting for word from the gallant man in the wireless room of the Grontoft. It came