Harold Cottam, the Carpathia’s 21-year-old wireless operator, had planned to go to sleep. First, though, he sent the Titanic a message to let them know he’d picked up transmissions meant for the luxury liner.
“Come at once. We have struck a berg,” Jack Phillips, the Titanic’s wireless operator, responded. At 12:35 a.m., Cottam alerted Arthur Rostron, the captain of the transatlantic passenger liner, who threw on a dressing gown and headed his vessel toward the sinking ship, BBC News reported in 2013.
“All this time, we were hearing the Titanic, sending her wireless out over the sea in a last call for help,” Cottam told The New York Times in 1912.
Another ship, the Olympic, also heard the distress calls but was over 500 miles away, The Irish Independent reported.
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