How RMS Titanic Became the First Real-Time Maritime Disaster
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, after RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912, two young men spent the next 160 minutes sending frantic distress calls across the North Atlantic to anyone who could hear them. Their names were Jack Phillips and Harold Bride. They kept working as the ship took on water, using one of the most advanced communication systems of its time to reach nearby vessels and call for help before the sinking became inevitable. After all, the fate of more than 2,200 people rested in their fingers.
William Hazelgrove, author of One Hundred and Sixty Minutes: The Race to Save the RMS Titanic, shares the forgotten side of history’s most famous shipwreck story through the eyes of her wireless operators.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.7 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. |
| 0:23.0 | And to hear and search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the IHeartRadio app or wherever |
| 0:29.8 | you get your podcast. A little known fact about the Titanic is that it was actually owned by an |
| 0:36.3 | American, J.P. Morgan. |
| 0:38.3 | Up next, a story about this infamous ship through the eyes of two men who often don't come up in discussions about the ship. |
| 0:46.3 | The ship's wireless operators, William Hazelgrove, will tell the story, but to start us off, |
| 0:53.3 | here's a reading from Titanic |
| 0:55.2 | Survivor, Jack Thayer's autobiography. Let's get into the story. |
| 1:02.8 | Those were ordinary days, and into them had crept only gradually, the telephone, the talking |
| 1:08.3 | machine, the automobile, the airplane due to have soon such a stimulating |
| 1:12.9 | yet devastating effect upon civilization. |
| 1:16.3 | The morning paper had headlines no larger than half an inch in height. |
| 1:20.9 | These days were peaceful. |
| 1:23.3 | It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event which not only made the world |
| 1:28.2 | rub its eyes and awake, but woke it with a start, keeping it moving at a rapidly accelerating |
| 1:34.4 | pace ever since with less peace, satisfaction, and happiness. |
| 1:41.0 | To my mind, the world of today awoke, April 15th, 1912. |
| 1:47.0 | On the night Carpathia came into New York, it's thundering, it's lightning, rains coming down. |
| 1:58.0 | The dock in New York Harbor is just mobbed with people. Thousands of people who |
| 2:02.2 | don't know if their husband, wives, daughters, sons have made it or not. And they see this ship |
... |
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