Cyril Furmstone Evans

Titanic tragedy

Evans was 20 in April 1912, when Titanic embarked on her doomed maiden voyage. He was the sole wireless operator on the SS Californian, which was also then crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

On the night of April 14, 1912, Evans was on duty aboard the Californian when Captain Stanley Lord entered the wireless operator's cabin and informed him that they had stopped because of ice in the vicinity and ordered him to warn all other ships in the area, which he did.

Meanwhile, in the wireless room of Titanic, senior operator Jack Philips and junior operator Harold Bride were tirelessly working to clear a backlog of passengers' private messages that were to be relayed to the Cape Race wireless station.

When Philips received Evans's ice warning, he was almost deafened by the sudden interference in his headset and sent an angry response: "Keep out; shut up! I am busy; I'm working: Cape Race." Philips never passed this message to the bridge, but in his defence, Evans had not prefixed the message with the letters, "MSG," which stood for Master Service Gram, as was customary for all messages intended for the bridge. Evans, feeling that he had done what was asked of him despite Philips's rude apparent rejection of the message, then switched off his wireless equipment and went to bed.

The exchange was to prove serious, as it could have prevented Titanic's collision with the iceberg later on that night.

In the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, Philips communicated with the nearest ship responding to the SOS call that he sent out on the orders of Titanic Captain Edward Smith. The ship was RMS Carpathia, which steamed to the rescue of the stricken liner but was 4 hours away, while the Californian was much closer to Titanic. Although Lord's officers informed him of the large ship, which had stopped and was visible to them, firing rockets, Lord never thought to wake Evans, but he tried to communicate with Titanic by Morse lamp. Evans was woken when it was too late and learned by his headset what had happened to Titanic. The Californian, after looking for any survivors that had been missed by Carpathia, found none and continued on its route to America. Upon arrival, several key crew members, including Lord and Evans, were summoned to give evidence at the American inquiry. Evans also gave evidence at the British inquiry into the tragedy. Like others involved in the disaster, he was offered a lot of money from newspapers for his story, but he refused it.

Later life

Evans continued his service with the Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company and its successor companies (Eastern Telegraph Company and Cable & Wireless: the later part of his career was spent as manager for Cable and Wireless on the West Indian island of St Lucia) for the rest of his life. He also served at sea in World War I and World War II, running mobile telecommunications for the British Army in North Africa and then Italy.

He married and raised a family. He died of a heart attack in 1959.

In popular culture

In the film A Night to Remember, Evans was portrayed by Geoffrey Bayldon.