Further out at sea was the Cunarder, Carpathia, which left New York for the Mediterranean on April 13th. Round she went and plunged back westward to take a hand in saving life. And the third steamship within short sailing of the Titanic was the Allan liner Parisian away to the eastward, on her way from Glasgow to Halifax.
While they sped in the night with all the drive that steam could give them, the Titanic's call reached to Cape Race and the startled operator there heard at midnight a message which quickly reached New York:
"Have struck an iceberg. We are badly damaged. Titanic latitude 41.46 N., 50.14 W."
Cape Race threw the appeal broadcast wherever his apparatus could carry.
Then for hours, while the world waited for a crumb of news as to the safety of the great ship's people, not one thing more was known save that she was drifting, broken and helpless and alone in the midst of a waste of ice. And it was not until seventeen hours after the Titanic had sunk that the words came out of the air as to her fate. There was a confusion and tangle of messages—a jumble of rumors. Good tidings were trodden upon by evil. And no man knew clearly what was taking place in that stretch of waters where the giant icebergs were making a mock of all that the world knew best in ship-building.
TITANIC SENT OUT NO MORE NEWS
It was at 12.17 A. M., while the Virginian was still plunging eastward, that all communication from the Titanic ceased. The Virginian's operator, with the Virginian's captain at his elbow, fed the air with blue flashes in a desperate effort to know what was happening to the crippled liner, but no message came back. The last word from the Titanic was that she was sinking. Then the sparking became fainter. The call was dying to nothing. The Virginian's operator labored over a blur of signals. It was hopeless. So the Allan ship strove on, fearing that the worst had happened.
It was this ominous silence that so alarmed the other vessels hurrying to the Titanic and that caused so much suspense here.