What really sank the Titanic
by
Mike Inger Helmke
Being
too busy sending messages to your friends is nothing new. Passengers of the
Titanic already did that a hundred years ago. They left their messages with the
ship's radio operator Jack Phillipps who would send them to Cape
Race, Newfoundland, where they were forwarded. Not unlike typing our
modern text messages with one finger on our smart phone, they were typed in Morse codeand sent by the latest the state of the art wireless
telegraph that had finally made it possible to get a message from a ship across
the ocean. And that's what sank the ship...
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In the evening of 14 April, 1912, Jack Philipps was working almost
non-stop in the wireless room on the boat deck. The wireless had broken down the day before, so he had to
clear a backlog of passengers' personal messages that had accumulated. He was
busy sending and listening to the faint signal of Cape Race to receive news for
his clients, when at 9:30 pm he got interrupted by a message with a
very strong signal.
It came from the radio operator of the nearby steamship Mesaba.
A warning about a large number of icebergs and an ice field directly
in the path of Titanic! Jack Phillips answered and acknowledged
the Mesaba's warning. Then he continued to transmit the passengers'
private messages.
The
Mesaba's wireless operator waited for Phillips to acknowledge that he had given
the report to the bridge. He wanted to know that
the officer in charge of the Titanic was warned. But the confirmation never
came. The message was never delivered to the bridge.
Instead Phillips continued communicating with Cape Race. At 11:00 pm he
was again interrupted. This time it was a message from Cyril Evans of the
nearby SS Californian, He was reporting that his ship was
stopped and surrounded by ice.
The signal was strong and loud in Phillips' ears because
the Californian was very close, while the signals from
Cape Race were faint. Phillips quickly sent back, "Shut up, shut up, I am
busy working Cape Race!" and continued communicating with Cape Race. Evans
waited a while longer before going to bed for the night.
When the Titanic was sinking a little later Second
Officer Charles
Lightoller asked
Phillips why
he hadn't been warned of such an imminent danger. Phillips explained: "I
just put the message under a paper weight at my elbow, just until I squared up
what I was doing before sending it to the Bridge."
The warning had been loud and clear and precise,
but, like so many of us, someone was too busy finishing other less important
issues. Obviously the problem was not that the Titanic hadn't been
warned, but that the warning was put aside and not passed on to
the command center.
The same happens to us. Too often we don't reflect
and react right away when we hear about something really important. And while
we "quickly" get busy thinking about something else, we actually
forget all about some main issue. How many wives had warned their husband they
were going to leave long before they actually did it? How many politicians are
so busy with politics that they let the real problems grow into catastrophes?
Messages like those for the Titanic don't seem to
come from a distant, quiet God whom we can hardly hear, but rather from a
loving father talking as loud and clear as can be. So thank God we have such a
loving God who warns us when it is time to stop or change course. But as king
Solomon observed thousands of years ago: "He who doesn't heed warnings
will suddenly be destroyed."
So let's remember that it wasn't the ice berg's
fault that the Titanic sank. It doesn't necessarily take big sins to sink a
life, but just a little "too-busy-ness" instead of listening to God
and taking his advice to heart. So let's not say, "shut up God, I'm
busy", when we feel that he is speaking to our hearts. Let's not get
entangled with less important things, but meditate on what he said. And most of
all, let's take action when he tells us something, right away, because later
will be too late.
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