Titanic Morse Code Messages: What the Titanic Sent, and Who Heard It

The Titanic struck the iceberg late on Sunday, April 14. Harold Bride, the junior wireless operator, told the US Senate inquiry what Captain Smith said when he came to the wireless room: "You had better get assistance." Phillips asked whether he wanted a distress call. "Yes; at once."

Asked what Phillips sent, Bride answered: "C.Q.D. about half a dozen times; M.G.Y. half a dozen times." CQD was "merely a code call", not the first letters of three words, and MGY was "the code call of the Titanic". Guglielmo Marconi, at the same hearing, explained that CQ means "all stations" and that his company had introduced the signal to show that a ship was in danger. The Berlin convention's signal, he added, was S.O.S.

• CQD

  -.-. --.- -..37 units · 2.22 s

• MGY, the Titanic's call sign

  -- --. -.--35 units · 2.10 s

• CQ, all stations

  -.-. --.-27 units · 1.62 s

Sent the way Bride described it, the opening call took about half a minute at 20 words per minute. Nobody recorded how fast Phillips actually sent, so treat that as a guide, not a measurement.

The first position the ships heard was 41.44 N, 50.24 W. By 12:25, Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall had worked out a corrected position, and from then on the Titanic gave 41.46 N, 50.14 W.

What survives of that night was logged by the ships and stations that heard the Titanic, and the British Wreck Commissioner's inquiry set those records out as one table in 1912. The lines below are taken from it word for word, with the ship's time first. In this part of the table New York time runs 1 hour 50 minutes behind the Titanic's.

The table gives the time the Titanic foundered, as the Carpathia later reported it to the Olympic, as "about 2-20 a.m." Call signs in the record: MGY Titanic, MPA Carpathia, MKC Olympic, MGN Virginian, MBC Baltic, MLQ Mount Temple, MKL Asian, MLC Celtic, SBA Birma, DFT Frankfurt, DKF Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm. "O.M." is "old man", the friendly name operators used for each other; it is still in the Morse code abbreviations radio amateurs use.

Hear five of the Titanic's own messages:

• "Come at once. We have struck a berg. It's a CQD OM." (to the Carpathia, 12:25)

  -.-. --- -- . / .- - / --- -. -.-. . / .-- . / .... .- ...- . / ... - .-. ..- -.-. -.- / .- / -... . .-. --. / .. - ... / .- / -.-. --.- -.. / --- -- / .--. --- ... .. - .. --- -. / ....- .---- / ....- -.... / -. / ..... ----- / .---- ....- / .--639 units · 38.34 s

• "Tell your Captain to come to our help. We are on the ice." (to the Frankfurt, 12:30)

  - . .-.. .-.. / -.-- --- ..- .-. / -.-. .- .--. - .- .. -. / - --- / -.-. --- -- . / - --- / --- ..- .-. / .... . .-.. .--. / .-- . / .- .-. . / --- -. / - .... . / .. -.-. .453 units · 27.18 s

• "We are putting the women off in the boats." (to the Olympic, 1:25)

  .-- . / .- .-. . / .--. ..- - - .. -. --. / - .... . / .-- --- -- . -. / --- ..-. ..-. / .. -. / - .... . / -... --- .- - ...317 units · 19.02 s

• "Engine room getting flooded." (heard by the Baltic, 1:35)

  . -. --. .. -. . / .-. --- --- -- / --. . - - .. -. --. / ..-. .-.. --- --- -.. . -..229 units · 13.74 s

• "Engine-room full up to boilers." (heard by the Carpathia, 1:45)

  . -. --. .. -. . / .-. --- --- -- / ..-. ..- .-.. .-.. / ..- .--. / - --- / -... --- .. .-.. . .-. ...263 units · 15.78 s

The cards play the words in today's International Morse code at 20 WPM. The position at the end of "Come at once" is sent as 41 46 N 50 14 W, without the decimal point; it takes 639 units, about 38 seconds.

Both. Phillips began with CQD, the call British Marconi operators were used to. Bride later told The New York Times that he suggested SOS, half joking: "it's the new call, and this may be your last chance to send it." From then on Phillips mixed the two. The first S.O.S. in the inquiry table is the Titanic's call to the Olympic at 12:45 a.m., half an hour after the first CQD, and the Asian heard her call S.O.S. again at 1:48.

You can hear why SOS won. CQD is three letters with gaps between them. SOS is sent as one unbroken signal, and it is shorter:

• SOS, sent as one signal

  ...---...23 units · 1.38 s

• CQD, three separate letters

  -.-. --.- -..37 units · 2.22 s

The Titanic did not send the first SOS. The Slavonia and the Arapahoe had both used it in 1909. But the disaster settled the question: the United States, which had held back from the Berlin agreement, adopted SOS in the Radio Act of 1912, and CQD faded out. SOS in Morse code covers the signal itself, and the history of Morse code shows where 1912 sits between the first telegraph line in 1844 and the end of Morse distress calls at sea in 1999. Morse's birthday, April 27, is kept as Morse Code Day.

There are two answers, and the inquiry record gives both.

• The last message read: "Engine-room full up to boilers," heard by the Carpathia at 1:45 a.m. The table lists it as the "last signals heard from 'Titanic' by 'Carpathia,'" and it is the last message whose words anyone took down.
• The last signal heard: at 2:17 a.m. the Virginian heard the Titanic call "C.Q." but could not read him. The signals "end very abruptly as power suddenly switched off." The Virginian called back and suggested the emergency set, and heard nothing more. The British report concludes that "the Marconi apparatus was at work until within a few minutes of the foundering."

• CQ, the last call heard

  -.-. --.-27 units · 1.62 s

The line often quoted as the Titanic's last words, "CQD this is Titanic. CQD this is…", comes from modern re-creations, not from the inquiry record.

The record shows the call spreading across the North Atlantic within minutes: the Mount Temple, the Ypiranga, La Provence and the shore station at Cape Race at 12:15 to 12:18, then the Carpathia, the Frankfurt, the Caronia, the Olympic, the Celtic, the Baltic, the Virginian, the Asian and the Birma.

The Carpathia made the difference. Her operator, Harold Cottam, told the US inquiry he had taken the evening's news from Cape Cod and was still at his instrument, about to turn in, when he caught the Titanic's call. According to the British report, the Carpathia was 58 miles away and answered that she was coming. The Mount Temple later heard her "report rescued 20 boat loads."

The Californian heard nothing. Earlier that evening, at 9:05 p.m. New York time, her only operator, Cyril Evans, had called the Titanic: "Say, old man, we are stopped and surrounded by ice." Phillips was clearing passenger messages and answered: "Shut up, shut up, I am busy; I am working Cape Race." Evans listened until 11:35 p.m. by his own ship's clock, then put down the phones and turned in. The British report found that the Californian "heard none of the 'Titanic's' messages; she had only one Marconi operator on board and he was asleep."

The Titanic also signaled by light. Boxhall fired about eight distress rockets and used a Morse light from the bridge toward a ship whose lights he could see, about five or six miles off; he got no answer, and the report concluded that the ship was the Californian. A Morse code flashlight flashes any message the same way, as on-off light.

There was friction on the air too. The table shows the Frankfurt asking, "What is the matter with u?", and later accounts say the Titanic called the Frankfurt's operator a fool and told him to keep out. Those words come from the BBC's and National Geographic's retellings, not from the inquiry's table.

The Titanic's two wireless operators worked for the Marconi company, not the White Star Line.

• Jack Phillips, the senior operator, was born on April 11, 1887, in Godalming, Surrey. He trained as a telegraphist at the Post Office and joined Marconi's training school in 1906. He kept sending until Captain Smith released the operators shortly before the sinking, reached the upturned collapsible lifeboat B, and died there before dawn.
• Harold Bride, the junior operator, survived on the same collapsible and gave his account to The New York Times and to both inquiries.

Most of their work was passenger traffic. Bride estimated that about 250 messages had been sent before the collision. They sent in the Continental code, which is today's International Morse code. The older American Morse code was still the standard of US landline telegraph companies.

No. Videos claiming an SOS from the Titanic in 2025, or one every few years, have no source behind them. The Titanic's wireless needed electric power, and the record shows exactly when that ended: at 2:17 a.m. on April 15, 1912, when the Virginian heard her signals "end very abruptly." At 2:20 the Olympic, keeping strict watch, heard "nothing more" from her. If you want to know how to call for help today, read how to signal SOS.

The Morse code translator below opens with the Titanic's first distress call, CQD six times and MGY six times, as Bride described it. Press Play, then replace the text with any message from the table, or slow it down with the speed control.

This guide is written and maintained by Translate Morse Code (independent site). Every timed line is quoted from the British Wreck Commissioner's 1912 wireless table, and every quote from the US Senate inquiry is checked against its transcript. Every code, unit count and duration comes from the same Morse engine the translator uses.