August 11
...---... DAY
The international distress call, SOS, which replaced CQD (All stations -- distress!), was first used by an American ship on this day in 1909. The ocean liner Arapahoe found itself in trouble off Cape Hatteras, NC. The ship’s wireless operator, T. D. Haubner, radioed for help when his ship lost its screw propeller near the ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’, Diamond Shoals. The call was heard by the United Wireless station at Hatteras.
Contrary to popular opinion, SOS (which has no stops between the letters, the signal being a continuous signal of three dots, three dashes and three dots) is not an acronym for any series of words such as Save Our Ship or Save Our Souls. The original call for distress began with the British CQ, meaning “All Stations”, used by telegraph and cable operators worldwide. The D for ’distress’ was added to CQ by the Marconi company in 1904.
In 1906, at the Berlin Radiotelegraphic Conference, the German’s general inquiry call, SOE, was suggested as an international distress signal. Changing the E to S gave the signal its unmistakeable character, and SOS was officially ratified as the international distress signal in 1908, although it was not officially adopted by the USA until 1912 (prompted by the Titanic tragedy). It is interesting to note that the Titanic’s radio operator sent Marconi’s CQD code several times before using the four-year-old international SOS signal a few minutes later ... as Marconi waited in NY to make the return trip to England on the ill-fated ship.
Globe Wireless, a Louisiana company, began operation that same year, as rules and regulations following the sinking of the Titanic included the requirement that all ships carry equipment capable of sending and receiving Morse code messages. On July 12, 1999, Globe Wireless broadcast its last Morse code message to ships, five months after Morse code was no longer an internationally acceptable form of communication for ships at sea. Globe’s was the last service of its kind in North America.
Morse code and its SOS signal began its demise in the 1960s as faster more efficient forms of transmission became available. Today, most ships use mobile phones, fax machines, and e-mail to communicate. The Global Maritime Distress and Safety system, which uses the satellite-based Global Positioning System, is now the internationally accepted manner in which to transmit a ship’s exact location and problem ... instantly.
In comparison, SOS and other Morse code transmissions which were the high tech methods of 1909, were “very slow, unreliable ... if you’re lucky, you can send 25 words a minute”, stated Globe Wireless Manager Karl Halvorsen. His and other similar companies around the world now provide the instant message services to ships that are used on land.
SOS ...---... Morse code is sinking.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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