Titanic Signals: Telegrams from the Carpathia, 1912.

The collection consists of telegram forms completed on the Carpathia, either of messages sent or messages received between 15th and 18th April 1912. They include messages composed by Ismay and Rostron. The telegrams show the attempts to manage the disaster by Ismay, Rostron and their respective companies and the desire of the outside world to get information about the survivors and the sinking. The correspondence between Rostron and his employers, Cunard, is often in Cunard telegraphic code. Many shipping companies used a private code, partly for security but mainly to lower costs by reducing the word count of radio messages. We have so far been unsuccessful in our attempts to obtain the correct codebook to decipher these telegrams. The collection does not include the private telegrams sent by the survivors to their families. For further details see the attached catalogue or contact The Archives Centre for a copy of the catalogue.