Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

Adventures of a Wireless Free-Lance 2Q portance, certainly the passengers did. They swarmed about the newsstand, asking no end of idiotic questions. How long would we be aground? Did the Captain know where we were? Was the fog going to lift? Were ships coming to our relief? How did we know if anybody was calling us when we didn't have those rubber things on over our ears? I made the interesting discovery that human beings in moments of great crisis crave chewinggum. Every one wanted to buy chewing-gum. And so 1 have come to the conclusion that gum chewing is the American way of expressing deep emotion. We closed the newsstand emphatically. Somehow, selling chewing-gum to anxious passengers did not harmonize with the dignity of our position. We were wireless heroes, not chewing-gum salesmen! The long waves continued to roll up under the stern from out of the fog, driving the ship farther and farther upon the ledge and tilting us more and more to starboard. The pounding did not excite the passengers, but the listing did. The opinion prevailed that the North American \vas about to turn turtle. Within half an hour after the first impact, many of the passengers put on life-belts. The social hall was in a hubbub. Every one was asking every one else questions. The second assistant engineer covered with mud and rust raced through the social hall and demanded the use of our telephone to the pilot house. He had been down in the bilges and wanted to inform the Old Man that no visible damage had been suffered by the garboard strakes. "She isn't taking any water, but we're stuck tight," he reported excitedly. The first mate asked for me. "The Captain wants you to get hold of Mackinac Island and have a tug sent out." "Yes, sir!" I snapped. "Where are we?" They didn't, it developed, know exactly where we were. "On one of the Duck s," he guessed. "Tell the tug to nose around the Ducks. We're probably on Little Duck." "Yes, sir!" I snapped. A picture came into my mind of the Old Man and 1 in the act of leaving the ship — sticking to our posts to the very last, while the ship was ground to flinders on one of the Ducks. This vision possibly was prompted by a sudden and sickening realization that the Mackinac Island operator would not be on the job for at least an hour. It was still very early in the morning. There was nothing else to do, so I started the motor-generator and called WHQ — the Mackinac Island station. There was no response. At that time of day no one was on the air. Even the static seemed to be reposing. The telephone rang again, and this time the voice of the first mate was agitated. "Has that tug started?" he wanted to know. I told him that the Mackinac Island station wasn't open and wouldn't be open for another hour. " You've got to get word to Mackinac somehow," he said. "We can see land now. We're on Little Duck. This wind is freshening. There isn't any time to lose, Sparks. Get busy!" I got busy. Futilely I called WHQ. I called and called and called. The operator probably hadn't left his boarding house. It was a tormenting situation. In desperation I called VBB, the Canadian Marconi station at Sault Ste. Marie. Someone was always on duty in VBB. He could put the message on the land line to Mackinac Island. Then I realized with a sensation of sickness that the Western Union office at Mackinac Island did not open until WHQ opened. VBB did not answer. 1 called him feverishly for five minutes. Then I rang the pilot house. The Captain answered. I told him that I had tried to raise Mackinac Island and the Soo, but that no one answered. "See if there isn't some ship near us," he replied. "That means an S O S," I told him. "All right — send as S O S!" he snapped. " But get somebody. What are you fellows being paid for?" And so the great moment came, not precisely as I had wished, perhaps; but here, at all events, it was. After two years of faithful brass pounding I was about to send my first SOS! I was divided between perspiring agitation and a consciousness of the part I played in this epic maritime drama. Kenneth, the junior operator, looked at me enviously as I slipped into the chair and grasped the handle of the motor-generator starter. "SO S?" he gasped.