[CW] Did You Ever Send SOS?

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

The subject came up on the Facebook Radio-Officers group. Here is my
response.

I answered SOS from passenger ship MS PRINSENDAM which had a fire in her
Engine Room while I was on VLCC TT WILLIAMSBURGH/WGOA. We were the closest
ship that replied (read on for an ironic twist) and her Master asked us to
render assistance. So we proceeded at maximum speed to the scene. Later,
power was lost to the Radio Room (Two Main Generators and the Emergency
Generator all failed) so the only communication facilities left was the
Emergency Transmitter and Emergency Receiver and battery lights. It became
obvious that the Emergency Transmitter and Receiver was operating
intermittently. I asked Chief Radio Officer Jack van der Zee if I could
take over the distress traffic, which I did immediately. I sent out a DDD
SOS DDD repeating MS PRINSENDAM's original SOS message. Later I repeated
the broadcast twice more, one time because I was so behind in my log
keeping I just let the auto alarm continue sending. It was on that long
broadcast that a cargo liner headed for Anchorage, Alaska replied to the
SOS. That ship was much closer than my ship but each of the previous auto
alarm signals, instead of waiting the required two minutes before the
sending of the SOS distress message, he simply reset the auto alarm and
went back to bed. But this time, because I just let the auto alarm continue
for an extra period of time, when he got to the Radio Room, he heard the
auto alarm signal and he copied the Distress message and sent an
acknowledgement to me. I understand that right after this happened, he went
to the bridge of his ship and tried to get the watch officer to provide him
with an alibi explaining why he didn't answer the previous three SOS
signals. The deck officer on watch flatly refused. More information about
this SOS, included a copy of my handwritten SOS logbook, the SOS logbook of
EXXON NEW ORLEANS/WNDM (R/O Richard Singer) and recordings of the earlier
XXX broadcast (unheard and unknown to me as I was off watch and asleep),
the original SOS from MS PRINSENDAM, and many other records are on the web
here: https://archive.org/details/SosMsPrinsendamOctober41980
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