Today’s Distressing Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
After the Titanic struck the iceberg on the night of April 14/15, 1912 and the damage was determined to be mortal, the captain went to the radio room with the ship’s estimated position and ordered radio transmissions to begin. Beginning at 12:25 a.m., the message, sent in morse code by radio operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, took the form of the Titanic’s calling code, MGY, then the letters CQ, which meant that it was addressed to “all ships,” followed by the letter “D” indicating distress or danger. The resulting three letter group was often held to mean “Come Quick, Danger,” but in fact the letters had no significance other than as outlined above. In 1908 the famous SOS signal was introduced, this being easier to send in morse code as it consisted of three dots, three dashes and three dots, but it was still not in common use by 1912. Later in the evening, radio operators Bride and Phillips started using the SOS code instead of CQD, one of the first times that it had been used in an emergency.
This is the only known photograph of the radio (Marconi) room of the Titanic, taken by a passenger who disembarked before the fatal leg of the trip.
Culled from: Titanic
Harold Bride ended up surviving the ordeal, but Phillips died of hypothermia. There’s a fascinating account of the sinking by Bride here.