# Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III
When the Andalusian Went Down
AS I have said, I was in the coastwise trade for nearly a year, and could savvy anything in English or Spanish, Morse or Continental, that the old-time operators were able to send. I had sent and received messages of every description and for every conceivable purpose.
Why, once a brother operator and I married a maid who was on board my ship to a man somewhere in Panama by wireless. Of course there was a minister at each end to help the ceremony along but it was we operators who really did it with our wireless sets.
Another time while we were running through a storm it was my pleasant duty to flash the tidings ashore that a stork had overtaken us and added two more to our passenger list, both consigned, to use a maritime term, to the same family.
-​The most exciting time I had while I was on the Carlos Madino was when we were taking a cargo of munitions to the Nicaraguan government and which we had orders to land at “Alvarada,” the headquarters of the Army.
When we were within a day’s run of that port I heard the call CM CM CM which was our ship. I sent my O. K, and then got a message for the Captain which told him to land the cargo at “Grayville” as the insurgents were watching “Alvarada.” It was signed Strada, Minister of War, Nicaragua.
I took this important message to the Captain myself and we were soon headed for “Grayville.” Several other messages passed between the Captain and the Minister of War and it struck me that the signals were the strongest I had ever received for the distance covered; in fact they were strong enough for a 5 kilowatt transmitter instead of a 2 kilowatt transmitter which I knew was installed at the station at “Alvarada.”
My first thought was that I had struck some highly sensitive spot on my crystal and I tested it out only to find that wherever I put the wire point on it the signals came in just as clear ​and loud. I wondered. While I am not the seventh son of a son-of-a-gun nor do I claim any supernatural powers I got the hunch that down here in tropic waters where insurrections are the rule and not the exception all was not as it should be.
I told the Captain about it and while he didn’t take much stock in the idea he had a search made of the ship. One of the room stewards reported that he had found an electric cord with a plug end hanging from a lamp socket in room 138. It might have been for an electric iron, for a hot-water heater or any one of a dozen other electric appliances, he said, but it looked suspicious.
A more thorough search of room 138, in which the Captain and I took part, revealed a heavy suit case under the bunk, which had a place to plug in the cord, another for the receivers, and a key—at least this was my theory. A strict watch was kept on the stateroom and I went back and sent GA, which was the call for “Alvarada” every few minutes.
In the course of fifteen minutes or so I got the OK of the operator at GA. The steward who had entered the stateroom adjoining the ​one occupied by the suspect heard the faintest sounds of sparks coming from it. After this report I made a careful examination of my aerial and found that the leading-in wire from it which connected with my aerial switch had been cut while the end of the wire from my instruments had been connected to a wire so small it could scarcely be seen and this wire led to state-room 138.
After connecting my instruments to the aerial again I immediately got in touch with the station at “Alvarada” and learned that no orders had been given by the Minister of War to change our port of destination. The Captain had the protesting passenger put in irons to be turned over to the government officials of Nicaragua and thus it was that another small insurrection was knocked in the head.
I had filed an application with the Marconi8 Company of America for a job on one of their transatlantic ships; it was in for nearly three months and I had long since concluded that it and I were pigeonholed. My great ambition now was to get a berth on one of the big ships that crossed the pond. Various operators had told me that it was useless to try to get in with ​the Marconi Company because the latter employed only operators who received their training in the Marconi wireless schools abroad.
Be that as it may on one of my return trips my father handed me a note from the Chief Engineer of the Marconi Company to see him. I did so and the result of that interview gave me the post of Chief Wireless officer of the S. S. Andalusian, one of the largest ships of the Blue Star Line.
Her route was between New York and Liverpool. Built by Harlan and Wolff of Belfast, Ireland, she was launched in 1901 and fitted for the transatlantic service in 1902. She was over 600 feet long, her breadth was nearly 70 feet and her depth was 40 feet. Talk about a ship, boy, the Andalusian was as far ahead of the Carlos Madino as that ship was ahead of a lifeboat.
The aerial of the Andalusian was formed of two wires 375 feet long and suspended between her top-gallant masts 200 feet above the sea and were held apart by two 8-foot spreaders. She was one of the first ships to be fitted with wireless and her wireless room was a specially ​built room on the port side of the forward saloon deck.
Although the apparatus was of the old Marconi type, having been installed when the ship was built, we could send from 300 to 400 miles with it and receive four times that distance. The transmitter was formed of two 10 inch induction coils the primaries of which were connected in series and the secondaries in parallel so that while the length of the spark was still 10 inches it was twice as fat and hence proportionately more powerful.
There was a jigger, as Marconi called his tuning coil, and a battery of 18 Leyden jars made up the condenser for tuning the sending circuits. It was also fitted with a new kind of a key invented by Sammis who was at that time the chief engineer of the Marconi Company of America.
He called it a changeover switch but it was really a key and an aerial switch combined. In order to connect the receiver with the aerial all you had to do was to turn the key, which was on a pivot, to the right. When the key was turned it also cut off the current from the ​transmitter by breaking the sliding contact between them.
To throw on the transmitter and cut off the receiver you simply turned the key back to its normal position and this made the connection between the aerial and tuning coil and at the same time it closed the circuit connecting the source of current with the induction coils.
The up-to-date feature of this set was the storage battery which provided an auxiliary source of current so that in the event of the ship becoming disabled and water flooding the engine room, which would put the dynamo out of commission, the storage battery in the operat-ing room could be thrown in and C Q D could be sent out as long as the wireless room remained above water. This was a mighty good piece of hindsight, for ships that might otherwise have been saved by wireless had gone down at sea with passengers, crew and cargo simply because the dynamos were drowned out.
The receiver was different from the one I used on the Carlos Madino for instead of a crystal detector we had a magnetic detector which Marconi had recently invented. While the magnetic detector was not nearly as sensi-​tive as a crystal detector when you found a sensitive spot on the latter, still there were no adjustments to be constantly made as with the former.
Now I’ve told you something about the ship and her wireless equipment and right here I want to introduce Algernon Perey Jeems, Second Wireless Officer of the Andalusian and my assistant. Perce, as I called him, looked his name and lived up to it. He was as thoroughbred a gentleman as ever worked a key.
He wasn’t very big in body—only 5 foot 4—and he was of very frail build but he proved to be a giant when it came to sheer bravery and as for meeting death when duty called he was absolutely unafraid. In fact when he saw the grim old reaper bearing down on him he went out of his way to grasp him by the hand and said: “When I get through with this message I’ll be ready to go with you.” And he did!
Before I tell you what happened to the Andalusian and of the heroic nerve of Jeems, I want you to know what C Q D means and how it came to be used as a distress signal. It was not until Jack Binns, who stuck to his key for 52 hours on the ill-fated Republic and by so do-​ing saved the lives of 1600 passengers and crew on board that C Q D came to be known the world over as a distress signal.
In the Continental code, which is used all over Europe by the wire telegraph lines, C Q means that every operator on the line shall give attention to the message which is to follow. It was natural then that when wireless apparatus began to be installed on ships that the Continental code should be the one used. C Q was the call signal employed to mean that every operator was to give attention to the message to follow, just as in the wire systems, or-as it is said on shipboard to stand by.
Then the Marconi Company added the letter D which means danger, hence C Q D means stand by danger and when this signal is received by an operator at sea, no matter how important the message that he is sending or receiving may be, he drops it at once and answers the C Q D signal to find out what the trouble is.
Now to go on with the story: We sailed from Liverpool about noon on the 15th of March for New York with a full passenger list and a valuable cargo. The first couple of days out the weather was fairly decent but as usual at ​this time of the year we ran into a real winter gale. We were struck time and again by mountainous seas. One gigantic wave that broke over her bow tore away a part of the bridge, others poured through ventilators and nearly every time she was hit more damage was done. To make matters worse the high winds drove us out of our course.
Although a sharp watch was kept it was so dark at night the lookout couldn’t see his hand an arm’s length before his eyes though he might have been able to see a ship’s lights ahead had one been bearing down on us. As the Captain had been on the bridge continuously for three days and nights I felt it was my duty as the first wireless officer to stick to my key, and though it was Perce’s watch I told him to turn in.
About midnight I heard the hull scrape against something that sounded as though she’d struck bottom when crossing a bar, or perhaps it was an iceberg. She keeled over until I thought she was a goner but straining and giving in every part of her superstructure she gradually rolled back and righted herself again.
The saloon and second cabin passengers came ​tumbling out of their rooms in nighties and pajamas but what they lacked in clothes they made up in life preservers. Wherever you find danger there you will find among the panic-stricken a few cool, calm and collected men and women and sure enough two or three men and as many women appeared a few minutes later fully dressed and ready for anything that might happen. The officers assured all hands that nothing had or could happen and nearly all of them returned to their rooms.
The third class passengers were locked in the steerage and here pandemonium reigned. They pounded on the hatchways and demanded that they be allowed to go on deck; they were scared stiff. Like the other and more fortunate passengers they were soon quieted by cool headed stewards and returned to their miserable quarters in the fo’cas’le.
Within the next couple of hours one of the assistant engineers discovered that the seams of the hull had parted aft and the water was pouring into her hold. The Captain ordered all the bulkhead doors closed, to keep the water out of the other compartments, and her great pumps going, but once started the mighty pres-​sure of the inrushing water ripped her seams farther along and broadened the gap. Knowing she could not stay afloat for any great length of time the Captain ordered me to send out the call for help and to be quick about it.
I got busy with the key sending out CQD CQD CQD listening-in between the calls as I never listened before to get an O K to my signals. It seemed as if all the operators were either asleep, dead or on the other side of the Equator, but after an eternity of time—which probably amounted to as much as five minutes by the clock—I caught the signal O K and then, “what’s up, old man.”
It was the S. S. Arapahoe that had answered and I was nearly frantic with joy for I felt that all of the responsibility for saving those 1200 souls on board rested entirely on me. I sent back the name of our ship, told him we were fast sinking, gave our latitude and longitude so that the Arapahoe would know where to find us if by good fortune we were still afloat when she reached us and, I added “for God’s sake put on all speed.”
In the meantime all the passengers had been notified, told to dress and to put on their life ​preservers while the sailors had been ordered to man the life-boats. When the passengers came on deck the situation was calmly explained to them together with the hopeful information that three steamers were bound for us as fast as steam could carry them for I had got the O K from two others—the Morocco and the Carlisle.
There was, on the whole, very little excitement now among the saloon and second-class passengers, and, curiously enough, I observed that those who had been seasick nigh unto death seemed to forget their ailment in the face of danger and had their sea-legs on well enough to look after their own safety. It proves, I think, that seasickness is largely a matter of an exaggerated imagination plus a lack of will power.
Before the hatches were opened to let the steerage passengers out of their hole and on to the lower deck the Captain and one of his officers took their places on the main deck forward where they could watch every move the poor frightened mob made. They came helter-skelter up the hatchways falling all over themselves and everybody else, but when they saw ​the Captain and the officer towering above them each with a brace of horse-pistols leveled at them like young cannon they eased off a bit their desire to be saved at the expense of others and the stewards had no further trouble with them.
Just then Perce got awake and hearing the gruff orders of the officers, the throbbing of the big pumps and the loud and excited talk of the passengers, he wanted to know the cause of it.
“The ship is sinking! so get up right away,” I exclaimed as evenly as my voice would let me and working the key for dear life.
“Oh, she is, is she,” he yawned as if it was an every-day occurrence. There was no excitability in Perce’s makeup.
Well, sir, we kept her afloat until daylight when the Captain ordered every one to the life-boats, women and children first.
Perce and I stuck to our instruments, keeping the ether busy and every now and then sending out cheery bulletins to the passengers, the gist of them all being that help was almost at hand.
I could feel the ship begin to settle and the life-boats loaded to the gunwales with their cargo of human freight, were quickly lowered into the running sea. It required great seaman-​ship to do this and even then one or two of them were capsized.
The Captain suddenly appeared before our window.
“Boys, you have done your duty. Now save yourselves,” and with that he was gone.
I could feel her nose pointing up in the air and I knew she was going down stern-end on. It was only a question of minutes.
“Go on, Perce. I’ll stick here.”
“Go on yourself,” he replied; “if any one stays I will.”
I don’t know exactly what happened but something flying through the air must have hit me, for the next thing I knew I had struck the icy water and had gone down several fathoms. The sudden ducking revived me and when I came up I swam for an overcrowded life-boat. The bos’n pulled me in and a woman’s voice whispered, “Thank God, he’s saved!”
There on the edge of the horizon I could see the dim outline of a ship with a great black stream of smoke in her wake and I knew her for the Arapahoe at last.
“Where’s the little operator?” a man asked me.
​The bos’n pointed to the fast sinking ship, the bow end only of which was out of the water, and said, “There he is, sir!”
And as we looked we saw big brave Captain Stacey and little heroic Perce with their right hands clasped and with the Captain’s left hand on Perce’s shoulder, just as two old friends might greet each other on Broadway or the Strand, who had not met for a long time.
An instant later the great ship sank from sight leaving a momentary whirlpool, due to the suction of it, in the water.
The Arapahoe reached us an hour later and stood by and considering the heavy seaway and the wind, which though it had somewhat abated was still blowing half a gale, picked up the survivors and then proceeded on her way.
The passengers made a good deal over me and, since I am only human, I should have enjoyed their worship immensely, but while I had done my duty I knew it was Perce who was the real hero and I told them so.