Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

RADIO BROADCAST 65 at noon, the first part of it dictated by the captain. "We are sinking stern first," it said. "The decks are awash. The boats are smashed. Can't hold out any longer." To this laconic farewell of another seafaring man, the operator added, as though he wished to assure Hanson that he wasn't unduly troubled: "The skipper dictated that. He ought to know. . . . Where did 1 put my hat? Sorry we couldn't wait for you. Pressing business elsewhere. Skoal!" There was no more. Not so much as a bit of wreckage was visible at four o'clock in the afternoon when the Esthonia arrived on the scene. The Grontoft and her crew and her dauntless operator had indeed gone to pressing business — elsewhere. Since that day in January, 1909, when Jack Binns used the wireless to save the passengers and crew of the White Star liner Republic, the world has come to expect great deeds of the men who ride the hurricane deck with receivers clamped to their ears. Nor has the world been disappointed. Sometimes they fail, as the operator of the Grontoft failed, because there are times when the elements are too much for man and his machines. More often they succeed. Their work is not always dramatic. The history of disasters at sea fortunately is not of a succession of Republic and Titanic affairs. It is the every-day routin'e duty of the radio that robs the sea of much of its terror. Radio frequently beats the heaviest storms of their toll of life; in fairer days it brings a sense of security and ease to all who travel on ships. Sometimes the amateur takes a hand at rescue work. Three Brooklyn men went fishing one day last fall out in the Atlantic near the Ambrose lightship. When they started for home late in the afternoon they discovered that a leak in the gas feed pipe had nearly emptied the gas tank. They had oars, but the seas were rising and they could make little headway. Despite their combined efforts at the oars they drifted steadily toward the open sea in a twenty-six foot motor boat. They spliced two anchor lines together, but the line parted. Again they drifted seaward. Night came and they signalled the lightship with a lantern, but without success. Through the night they continued to drift with only a half filled water jug for nourishment. At two o'clock in the morning they saw a brightly lighted passenger ship pass within two hundred yards without noticing them. Dawn came and they observed the Hudson of the United States lines and the Lackawanna Valley, a freighter, and hailed them without success. At noon another' freighter came into view and seemed to head toward them. The men exhausted themselves trying to attract her attention, but she sheered off. They were weak with hunger and exposure. Their motor boat was now about thirty miles southeast of the Ambrose light and far out of the lane of frequent travel. The boat was half full of water and her seams were beginning to open. They realized that their situation was desperate. Then the steamer Nantucket came over the horizon, made for them, and picked them up. The night before a young brother of one of the men had become worried over their absence and had gone to a small wireless station operated by an amateur. A message sent out from that station was picked up by a wireless station operated by another amateur out on Rockaway Beach. From there it was relayed to the Atlantic and picked up by the Nantucket. PRACTISING MEDICINE BY RADIO AT SEA RADIO has brought a new idea into the practice of medicine — the long-range operation. Late one night the wireless operator at the Bush Terminal building in New York City sat at his desk and picked up a message from the captain of an oil tanker out in the Atlantic. One of the crew had cut his hand on a piece of wire a few days before; it had become infected and the man was suffering acutely. There was no surgeon aboard and an immediate operation seemed necessary. A heavy sea was running and it was impossible to transfer the man from the ship. The tanker's wireless was searching the ether for help. The wireless operator at the Bush Terminal decided to take a hand. He telephoned to Dr. Raymond Barrett, of the Brooklyn Hospital, at his home and got his cooperation. Then he sat at his apparatus and transmitted directions between the physician at his home in Brooklyn and the tanker rolling in the Atlantic. There was a member of the crew who had had some experience as a nurse. To him the operator sent Dr. Barrett's directions about accessories for the operation, the making of bandages and drainage tubes. A herring