RMS Titanic Book 1

Jack Phillips

What happened next at 22:55 I can only guess was because of being busy, staying up late, and going on very little sleep but when the wireless operator for the SS Californian tried to contact Titanic about iceberg warnings, the sound ended up ringing loud in Phillips ears because he had the volume up loud in order to hear Cape Race (at the time the reception was based around how far away ships were and Californian was about 10 miles away and both Evans and Phillips were using spark gap wireless sets whose signals bled across the spectrum and were impossible to tune out). The Californian's signal was strong and Cape Race was faint to Phillips and inaudible to Cyril Evans.

Phillips told the wireless operator "Keep out; shut up, I'm working Cape Race" and continued communicating with Cape Race, while Evans listened a while longer before going to bed for the night. It can be argued that Phillips wasn't be rude at all and was just using common banter of the time period.

There was a pretty funny story I heard of Harold Lowe telling J. Bruce Ismay "if you would get to hell out of that then I shall be able to do something" when Ismay tried to help with the lifeboats.

Evans did not request that the message be delivered to the bridge, and the crew of Californian did see the rockets from Titanic at 00:45 and woke their captain, Stanley Lord, who chose to ignore the rockets and returned to bed................damn nothing was going their way on this night.

Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 that night and began sinking. Bride had woken up and begun getting ready to relieve Phillips when Captain Edward Smith entered the wireless room and told Phillips to prepare to send out a distress signal. Shortly after midnight, Captain Smith came in again and told them to send out the call for assistance and gave them Titanic's estimated position. Phillips began sending out the distress signal, code CQD, while Bride took messages to Captain Smith about which ships were coming to Titanic's assistance. At one point, Bride jokingly reminded Phillips that the new call was SOS and said, "Send S.O.S., it's the new call, and it may be your last chance to send it." (A myth developed after the disaster that this was the first time SOS was used, but it had been used on other ships previously. Phillips was able to contact the RMS Carpathia which headed for the scene.

After taking a quick break, Phillips returned to the wireless room and reported to Bride: the forward part of the ship was flooded, and they should put on more clothes and lifebelts. Bride began to get ready, while Phillips went back to work on the wireless machine. The wireless power was almost completely out shortly after 2:00, when Captain Smith arrived and told the men they had done their duty and were relieved. Bride later remembered being moved by the way Phillips continued working. While their backs were turned, a crew member (either a stoker or trimmer) sneaked in and attempted to steal Phillips's lifebelt. Bride, outraged at the man's behaviour, attacked the man and might have hit him with an object. The water was beginning to flood the wireless room as they both ran out of the wireless room, leaving the motionless crewman where he fell. The men then split up, Bride heading forward and Phillips heading aft. This was the last time Bride saw Phillips.

Conflicting and contradictory information led to popular belief that Phillips possibly managed to make it to the overturned lifeboat B, which was in the charge of Second Officer Charles Lightoller, along with Harold Bride but didn't last the night. In his New York Times interview, Bride said that a man from boat B was dead, and that as he boarded the Carpathia, he saw that the dead man was Phillips. However, Bride, when testifying in the Senate Inquiry, changed his story, saying that he had only been told that Phillips died on Collapsible B, and was later buried at sea from Carpathia and had not witnessed this for himself.

There are memorials to Jack Phillips in Nightingale Cemetery, Farncombe and in the Phillips Memorial Cloister, part of the Phillips Memorial Ground, which lies to the north of the Church of St Peter & St Paul, Godalming.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking, the BBC World Service broadcast, on 10 April 2012, a radio documentary in the "Discovery" series, entitled Titanic – In Her Own Words. The programme was conceived and created by Susanne Weber and was narrated by Sean Coughlan, who had previously written a book on the Titanic radio messages. The programme used voice synthesis to re-create "the strange, twitter-like, mechanical brevity of the original Morse code messages " transmitted by Titanic and neighbouring ships. Messages often included the fashionable slang expressions of the time, such as "old man". The BBC noted that "these messages were recorded at the time in copper-plate handwriting, now scattered across the world in different collections, but together forming a unique archive."

Portrayals:
Karl Dannemann (Titanic; 1943)

Ashley Cowan (Titanic; 1953)

Kenneth Griffith (A Night to Remember; 1958)

Uncredited actor in S.O.S Titanic (1979)

Matt Hill (1996) (Titanic) (TV miniseries)

Gregory Cooke (Titanic; 1997)

(Titanic) Thomas Lynskey (2012) (The Last Signals)

Jack Phillips undoubtably made a big mistake on this night however I didn't make this book to pin the blame on one person or to disrespect any of the people. Phillips continued working to contact any ships he could and it was him and Bride that made it possible for the Carpathia to even know what was happening. A lot of the survivors owe their survival partly to him. He died a hero.

Rest In Peace John George "Jack" Phillips

I used Wikipedia, the Titanic wiki, and www.encyclopedia-titanica.org as my sources

Phillips was a brave man, and I shall never foget [sic] his work during the last awful fifteen minutes. I strapped a lifebelt on him whilst he worked. Phillips clung on sending messages until after the last boat, but one had been launched.
~ Harold Bride interview - Pall Mall Gazette, Friday, April 19th, 1912