End of No. 117

Four dashes, repeated for one minute every three minutes, is the radio beacon signal of the lightship that guards dread Nantucket Shoals. The first lightship was stationed off the shoals in 1854. Three years ago Lightship No. 117, a 132-ft. craft equipped with every device science could think of to protect transatlantic shipping, was launched at Charleston, S. C. and took up its rough and lonely post 40 mi. southeast of Nantucket Island.

One morning last week fog curled in thick shrouds around the little vessel. Useless was the 16,000 candlepower electric light glaring on her masthead. Every 15 seconds her fog whistle emitted a mournful blast. The beacon signal, sounded by a motor-driven key controlled by clockwork, went out continuously instead of on the fair weather schedule of 15 min. every hour. The submarine oscillograph, synchronized with the beacon, throbbed cyclic warnings through the water.

An incoming liner steering for a light-ship finds its direction by rotating the loop antenna of the radiocompass. The beacon is strongest when the loop is parallel to the direction of the signals, weakest when it is at right angles. Since sound travels much more slowly through water than radio waves through air, the distance of the lightship can be computed by noting the time between reception of the beacon and oscillograph signals.

At daybreak the White Star liner Olympic, 23-year-old sister ship of the Titanic, picked up faintly the signal of No. 117, set a course for it. Almost seven hours later a horrified shout burst from a lookout. Bells jangled, the four giant screws threshed madly in reverse, seamen rushed to man lifeboats. Carried helplessly forward by its own momentum, the 46,000-ton liner crunched into the little lightship, cut it in two. Four of the lightship's crew of eleven were never found, and three died after being picked up by the Olympic's lifeboats.

Captain John W. Binks is a florid, stocky oldster who has commanded White Star boats for ten years and became master of the Olympic in 1932 with a long clear record behind him. When the liner sidled up to a Manhattan pier last week with a few scratches on her huge prow, he was too tired and confused to give a rational explanation of his first tragedy.

The matter was not much clarified when the captain and his staff later testified before a Federal inquiry board. Gist of the testimony:

As the liner drew close it steered slightly to port of the lightship and speed was reduced to 16 knots. The oscillograph detector was not used to find the distance, but the liner's position was computed by cross-bearings from shore radio stations. Few minutes before the crash, while the beacon indicated the lightship to be three degrees off the starboard bow, the signals were suddenly lost. The oscillograph detector went dead also. Then the lightship's fog whistle was heard. Every officer on the Olympic's bow agreed the sound was off the starboard bow. To play safe Captain Binks ordered the helmsmen to veer ten degrees farther to port. When the lightship was amazingly sighted dead ahead through the fog it was too late to avoid collision.

Superintendent George Eaton of the Lightship Service snorted that the Olympic was accustomed to pass unnecessarily close to No. 117, sometimes within 500 ft. Captain Binks admitted that he usually steered close to the lightship "as a safeguard."*

Divers inspected the Olympic's hull, found nothing wrong but a slightly bent stem. The liner sailed on schedule for Southampton, with Captain Binks in command. In Washington, the Government prepared to sue the White Star Line for the loss of the lightship. In Portuguese cottages along the waterfront of New Bedford, home of five of the seven victims, there was wailing all night. Over the drowned hulk of No. 117, another lightship, No. 106, dropped anchor in clear water, began sending beacon signals to all ships at sea:

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*Last January the Washington sideswiped No. 117, carried away a boat davit, mast grating, radio aerial.

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