“Tell the operator,” said the cable editor again to the office boy, “to duplicate that dispatch I gave him to our Halifax man. Get his name out of the correspondents’ book.”
“Who wrote that story of the ‘“Carmania” in the Icefield’?” said the night city editor to the copy-reader who “handled” the homecoming of the “Carmania,” which arrived Sunday night and the story of which was already in the mail edition of the paper before him. The copy-reader told him. He called the reporter to his desk.
“Take that story,” said the night city editor, “and give us a column on it. Don’t rewrite the story; add paragraphs here and there to show the vast extent of the icefield. Make it straight copy, so that nothing in that story will have to be reset. You have just thirty minutes to catch the edition. Write it in twenty.”
“Get the passenger lists of the ‘Olympic’ and the ‘Baltic,’” was the assignment given to another reporter, all alert waiting for their names to be called, every man awake at the switch.
In the mean time, the story from the Montreal man was being ticked off; on another wire Halifax was coming to life.
“Men,” said the city editor, “we have just five minutes left to make the city [edition]. Jam it down tight.”
Already the three cuts had been made, the telegraph editor was handling the Montreal story, his assistant the Halifax end, and[Pg 15] the cable editor was still editing the Associated Press bulletins and writing a new head to tell the rest of the story that the additional details brought. The White Star Line man had a list of names of passengers of the “Titanic” and found that they numbered 1300, and that she carried a crew of 860.
In the mean time proofs of all the “Titanic” matter that had been set were coming to the desk of the managing editor, in charge over all, but giving special attention to the editorial matter. All his suggestions went through the city editor, and on down the line, but he himself went from desk to desk overlooking the work.
“Time’s up,” said the city editor; but before he finished, the cable editor cried to the boy: “Let the two-column head stand and tell them to add this head:”
At 12:27 this Morning Blurred Signals by Wireless Told of Women Being Put off in Lifeboats—Three Lines Rushing to Aid of 1300 Imperiled Passengers and Crew of 860 Men.