Harry Cheetham's 1911 radio operator certificate. drove them in a torrential downpour to the home of Howard F. Smith, president of the Gloucester National Bank. Smith's son Malcolm was an avid radio buff, and Cheetham crawled out on the slippery slate roof to hook up his Marconi wireless to Malcolm's roof antenna. Stevens and Cheetham stood halfhour watches, straining to overhear any transmissions between Carpathia and the shore or other ships. Ar the same time, they were enjoying their host's hospitality and steadily depleting his stock of old dark beer. As a result, Cheetham was not in great shape when the antenna toppled over in the storm around l:OOAM . Since it happened on his watch, he was forced to inch out in the driving rai n onto the wet, slippery roof and reattach the wires. His efforts were rewarded on his next shift around
SEA HISTORY 138, SPRING 2012
2:10AM, when he copied rhe message "Maj. Archie Bum [sic] not among the survivors" sent from Carpathia to US president William Howard Taft. Major Archibald W. Butt (1865-1912) was a personal aide to the president, following a distinguished military and diplomatic career. He was returning from a ren-day European vacation aboard Titanic, and the news of his loss was a genuine scoop. Earlier, C heetham had secured an open phone line in G loucester to Boston, and he called in his tidbit to the Globe editor for the next edition of the paper. For their night's intercept of the private message, Cheetham and Stevens were "one hundred and seventy five dollars richer" upon their return to Boston the next day. Shortly before Carpathia reached the pier in Manharran, enterprising newsmen in search of exclusive stories chartered boats and headed out to meet the heroic liner. Caprain Rostron, however, turned away the press boats, and the reporters were not permitted on board until after Carpathia
had docked and disembarked the Titanic survivors. One of the pressmen, a journalist for the Underwood & Underwood Company, met Bernie Palmer and listened closely to her story of photographing not only Titanic survivors, bur also the iceberg that sank the famous steamship. H e made a deal with her: he wo uld not only develop Bernie's pictures and give her back her negatives and a free set of prints, he wo uld also give her $10 for exclusive use of her pictures in his newspaper! With little sense of their true value, Bernie handed over her Brow nie. The newsman, whose nam e is unrecorded , carried off his prize and the rest was history. When he found out, Bernie's father was livid, bur by then it was too late-the pictures had already been published as a n exclusive from aboard the rescue liner Carpathia. Bernie a nd her mother co ntinued their voyage aboard Carpathia, and their local newspaper, the Galt Reporter, published a letter from Mrs. Palmer dared 27 April that delivered new details of the tragic shipwreck and dramatic rescue. In 1985-73 years after Titanic sankBernie donated her camera, negatives, prints, and, most importantly, her story to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Bur the Titanic's story wit hin rhe Smithsonian's holdings doesn't end there. Shortly after Carpathia's rescue mission, the liner was in port at Boston. Parts of her radio apparatus, in cluding two Leyden jars and a transmitter switch lever, had been damaged while in operation during the rescue of Titanic passengers and needed to be replaced. As a certified Marconi inspector, H arry C heetham was sent to
RMS Carpathia
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