It was before the Titanic hit the iceberg that the Titanic
CW operator told the Californian CW operator to get off the
air. He considered his normal Titanic CW message traffic to
have priority over any CW traffic that the Californian might
need to pass. Turns out the Californian's CW operator was
the only person in the world who could have saved the life
of the Titanic's CW operator.


Firstly the Californian's r/o was not told to get off the air, he was told
to "Keep out, I'm working Cape Race" while the Titanic was sending Passenger
telegram messages to Cape Race shore station. The Titanic's r/o was just fed
up with stations butting in, the "Break-Break" syndrome. The r/o on the
Californian was in-experienced and failed to prefix his message correctly,
this brought about the rebuke from the Titanic who thought he was just
chatting.

It is also thought that it was the same failure of the MV Mesaba's r/o to
correctly prefix the last ice warning message that was received by the
Titanic that meant this message was not sent straight to the bridge, rather
than being left with the other routine messages.

There is no evidence that the Californian heard any radio distress traffic
until the r/o came on watch the next morning. They did however see rockets
from the Titanic.

Regards
Jeff