He Called the Titanic to Say Wellfleet Had Messages Waiting

Harold Cottam was about to turn in.

His coat was off. His headphones were still on. It was past midnight on April 15, 1912, somewhere in the North Atlantic, and the 21-year-old wireless operator aboard the Cunard liner Carpathia was giving it a couple more minutes, waiting on a reply from another ship before calling it a night.

His captain would later describe him as undressing. When a U.S. senator put that version to him, Cottam said no. He was not undressing. He was just a young man at the end of a long shift, still listening.

Four Messages From Cape Cod

What he was listening to was Cape Cod.

The big Marconi station on the bluff in South Wellfleet had traffic going out for the Titanic. Nothing dramatic. Just ordinary wireless business waiting to be passed along. Cottam told the Senate inquiry he'd been taking some of it down.

So he did a small, collegial thing. He called the Titanic's operator. In his own words: "I asked him if he was aware that Cape Cod was sending a batch of messages for him."

He had no idea the ship had already been calling for help. By the British inquiry's chronology, Titanic's distress calls had been going out for roughly ten minutes.

The answer came straight back. Cottam gave it to the senators this way: "Come at once. It is a distress message; C. Q. D."

He asked whether he should report it to his captain. The reply was yes. Titanic sent its position.

Cottam went to the bridge. Captain Arthur Rostron turned Carpathia around. By Rostron's own testimony, they were about 58 miles away. The ship ran through ice in the dark and reached the reported position a little after 4 a.m. The Titanic was gone. More than 700 people were pulled from the lifeboats.

Cottam testified that he "did not come off for a couple of days." At some point he fell asleep sitting at his instrument.

The rescue did not happen because of Wellfleet. But the call that uncovered the distress began with a question about messages from Wellfleet.

The Bluff That Won Every Argument

Marconi built on that bluff in 1901 because nothing stood between it and Europe but water.

Storms wrecked the original rings of masts. They were replaced with four wooden towers, each 210 feet tall. Kerosene engines fed the transmitter.

On January 18, 1903, South Wellfleet carried what the National Park Service calls "the first public two-way wireless communication between Europe and America": a greeting from President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII, and the King's reply.

In 1917 the Navy shut the station down for wartime security. By 1920 it had been dismantled. Meanwhile the cliff under it was losing about three feet a year.

Thirty-Two Feet From the Edge

For a long time there was a small shelter out near the bluff with a model of the old station inside. People walked out, looked at the tiny towers, then looked up at the empty air where the real ones had stood.

On July 23, 2013, the Seashore tore the shelter down. It was 32 feet from the edge. The superintendent said the whole thing, cement base and all, could have gone over in one bad winter.

Today you park off Marconi Station Road and find an information kiosk, exhibits near the lot, a few benches, and the Atlantic. Most of the ground the station stood on is already in the ocean.

Stand at the edge of the lot long enough and it's easy to picture the signals going out from here into the dark, meant for a ship that never got to read them.

Marconi Station Site | Marconi Station Road, South Wellfleet · Cape Cod National Seashore
Kiosk, exhibits, benches, seasonal restrooms. NPS site page