| OCR Text |
Show I Adventurers' i jij. "Death Over Miami" By FLOYD GIBBONS " Famous Headline Hunter rjERE'S a tale of the high seas, of "Sparks," as the sea-XI sea-XI men call the radio operator who sits day and night over icj his set, picking up messages that may mean life or death ' th,' to some hapless souls. Mist-- In this case, thanks to Ray Hutchens of Long Island City, N. Y., it . meant life to the victims of a hurricane which had just swept a path of Uyi death and destruction over Florida! i bet' Ray tells me the Ward Line Passenger ship Siboney, with him on s C- board as chief wireless operator, and a chap named Milton Kitchen as the junior, pulled out of Havana, bound for New York, on September 18, 1926. i s- Just before they left the dock at noon, they received a hurricane warn- and '.' ing from a station in New Orleans whose call letters were WNU. steflf; Now Ray says such warnings were a dime a dozen, and most S a; of them came to exactly nothing. So when they ran into a gale i am'-' with moderate sea on passing Morro Castle, they thought little of ewej- it. All unsuspecting they turned toward Key West. Sa'ls Somebody Called the Siboney. al? Ray tells us that at 10 p. m. that night he was on watch, Static was , bad, the sea was running a bit more heavily, and the wind at gale force on threw clusters of spray against the radio-room ports so forcibly it sound- 0 ed like hail. The passengers, their vacations over, were asleep or pre-A'; pre-A'; paring for bed, secure in the thought of the trained men in whose hands 1 ! they had entrusted their welfare. Ray, watching with anxious eyes the , ' rising storm, could think only of the helplessness of even these trained ' SH: men when Nature goes on a rampage. gr5- . Idly running through the 600-meter band, Ray found things dull, with 0U?'!: little traffic. At ten-thirty, against a rasping background of static, some ' ; fellow called WRN (the Siboney, Ray's vessel) slowly and repeatedly. "Shucks," Ray thought to himself. "This'II be some two-by- , four tanker about to ask for a relay." Sail;: id th Unable to send their messages the full distance because of lack of idin- power, the smaller ships occasionally asked help from a ship with better the-" equipment Ray was certainly justified in jumping to this conclusion, 1 for what else would be sending a signal that was not the clear, musical Iee-? note of the shore stations, but a weak, straggling sputter, "like someone co3e;" shaking a bucket of pebbles," as Ray puts it r if r But when this puny station signed WAX, which was the shore station at Miami, Florida, Ray was shocked into action! Miami, whose high, clear note always rang with ample volume through the thirty miles of oilers-' static 11134 separated them. Something was radically wrong, Ray was ashin- to tunc 's Jetf? Relayed the Tale of Disaster to the World. Slfc sure of that. Hurriedly he snapped back a brief "Go ahead." Ray "d"n'err 'cnew sore statin must be able to hear the Siboney much better : ' "' than Ray could catch the thin signal that trickled in from Miami. fjffc "Ham" Told of Miami Hurricane. opnttK And WAX, Miami, came back with the hottest row of dots iclpfc and dashes Ray ever had directed toward him in his life! A piti-hivetii: piti-hivetii: ful appeal for food, clothing and medical supplies for the victims ic appras 0f the Miami hurricane, which had just swept a path of death and stores." destruction across Florida! 333 There was not a second to be lost! Out there in those waste stretches, J battered and swept clean by the fury of a Nature gone mad, were help-IV help-IV less men, women, yes and little children, their homes destroyed, their 1 last link with the world this little ship's radio room, where a horrified 'i man sat over a delicate instrument and relayed the tale of their dis-wfTPfl dis-wfTPfl aster to the world. Hfl Ray jumped to his feet, ran into their quarters, slapped his junior, vjjjl Kitchen, on the stomach. For the next twelve hours, while .Kitchen stod by and tended the arc and spark transmitters, Ray alternately re-djM re-djM ceived from Miami and sent to WSA, in East Moriches, Long Island. A pal of Ray's, Al Kahn, who was on the Orizaba, near Hatteras, helped , to keep other ships' signals off the air while Ray was slowly trying to pound through the thousand miles between the Siboney and WSA. Static Made It Almost Impossible. You fellow-adventurers who are "hams," as the radio amateurs call JVEU; themselves, will know what Ray was up against trying to pick up the ''fa ,aint code of WAX with static buzzing, sputtering, crackling, crashing, I" oto'sp downing out the almost inaudible signal that meant aid and succor to !H i thousands of souls. Ray sat there glued to his chair for twelve hours, straining his ears to catch the pitiful appeal, receiving under almost ;; superhuman conditions. "So bad was the static," Ray tells me, "that gt each dot was a drop of sweat and each dash a moan." 7T3i Captain F. L. Miller hove the ship to so as to keep the oper- JWf ators within range of WAX's low-power transmitter. He had been Um asked to bring his ship into the harbor with food and medicine, iJSj but the ship's draft would not allow it even in calm weather. W aU e Ray was racking his brains wondering how the WM i Miami operators, whose big station was obviously out of whack, were '07 1 getting even this faint signal through. "Those boys certainly deserve jpl' credit," Ray says proudly, "all their towers were down; the roof was s bIown from their quarters, power and telegraph lines were all out; they were sheltering one hundred men, women and children in the controls' control-s' room, and even then they rigged up an emergency transmitter, pow-$T pow-$T V" lred with batteries stolen from wrecked cars, to get the first word of ji the hurricane to the outside world! "So far as I know," Ray says, 'it lightli Was the first time a land station ever sent an SOS to a ship!" njine"" 1 guess we can sympathize with Ray when we imagine the feelings i ot that operator at WAX, who called the ship so slowly and prayerfully With that pathetic little sending shebang, knowing that the Siboney was due to pass and had continuous watch. Those boys got very little 'ii! Credit 0115 PaPers at the time, but Ray will always remember them i Wlth Pride in his profession. WNU Service. |
