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