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bunk.
    ‘A quarter to six.’
    The chief had brought cold air into the cabin with him. Evans stood up, yawning and shivering. He pulled on trousers and a coat over his pyjamas and sat at his equipment, trying to make sense of what the chief had said. A ship firing rockets?
    There was silence in his headphones. For a moment he was puzzled, but then he saw: the magnetic detector had wound down. He rotated its handle a few times until its ebonite discs began to whirr. The chief officer stood by him, perfectly still, waiting. George Stewart was an odd man, Evans thought, with his droopy moustache and glassy eyes. He hardly ever said a word; you just never knew what he was thinking.
    Evans switched on his transmitter and sent out a general stations call: ‘All ships, this is MWH.’ His headphones instantly crackled with pulses. He took up his pencil and wrote out the letters as they came: ‘Say old man, do you know the Titanic has struck an iceberg and is sinking 41 46 N 50 14 W?’
    He tapped his Morse key as quickly as he could. ‘Thanks old man but did you say Titanic ?’
    The reply came at once. ‘Yes Titanic . Tell your captain.’
    Evans took off his headphones and turned wide-eyed to the chief and held out to him the slip of paper. Stewart read the message and, strangely calm, asked him whether he was sure. Evans said he was. ‘I was just talking to her,’ he added, ‘last night. I can’t believe it. I was just talking to her.’
    The chief officer frowned a little and turned away. ‘Never mind about all that,’ he said as he walked from the room with the message held tightly in his hand.
    Evans replaced his headphones and began tapping the key as fast as he could. In a few moments, he knew, he would feel the deck beneath his feet jump and leap as the ship’s engine went full speed ahead, and soon after he would see the great liner, flashing her lights and hoisting her flags in gratitude. Her signals had been very strong the night before, so she must be close.
    But the deck remained still, and a minute or so later the chief was back in the room. ‘The captain wants an official message,’ he said, ‘captain to captain. He doesn’t want to go on a wild goose chase.’
    Evans was surprised. He had already confirmed the Titanic ’s position and thought they should be making full steam for her – right now. But he took to his key again, listened carefully through his headphones, and soon had a message written out in his very best lettering on an official Marconigram form. ‘ Titanic struck berg, wants assistance urgent. Ship sinking, passengers in boats. Her position: Lat 41.46 Long 50.14. Signed: Gambol, Master, Virginian .’ He stamped it with his rubber Californian stamp.
    The chief thanked him and once again left the room.
    Evans’ headphones now crackled with Morse – from the Mount Temple , the Frankfurt , the Baltic , the Virginian , the Birma. He worked each ship one by one, getting what details he could, and telling anyone who listened about how close his own ship was to the sinking liner. ‘I had MGY very loud last night,’ he sent. His Morse key had never tapped so fast. The stale cabin air became acrid with ozone from the transmitter’s spark. ‘What happened to her? When did she hit? Was she in the icefield? How close are you? We are closer! Do you see us? We are a four-master with a salmon pink funnel. We are very near her.’ He kept sending until a message came in from Mr Balfour, a travelling Marconi inspector on the Baltic : ‘Stand by and keep out. You are jamming. We are trying to hear Carpathia . Balfour, Inspector.’
    Evans paused. He did not want Mr Balfour to report him to the company, but he also knew the rules: closer ships had precedence over distant ones. And his ship was certainly closer than the Baltic. He had every right to find out what was happening.
    He took off his headphones and began to hunt for his operator’s manual. But when he heard the ring of the telegraph