The Message Got Through
A telegrapher, a lighthouse girl, a wireless operator and an engineer each got their warning through, and in their own words we hear what happened after it arrived.
FactUnion VerifiedEvery fact on the episode's fact sheet was checked against its sources. Wrong facts were corrected. What this meansFacts checked 16 Oct 2026
Chapters (6)
About this episode
On May 31, 1889, telegraph operator Emma Ehrenfeld sent a warning about the South Fork dam toward Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In January 1856, Abbie Burgess, sixteen or seventeen, kept two lighthouse lamps burning on Matinicus Rock, Maine, for four weeks while no boat could land. In April 1912, Harold Bride, the Titanic's junior wireless operator, watched his senior colleague, Phillips, stay at the key. On January 27, 1986, engineer Roger Boisjoly tried to stop the Challenger launch.
Each story is told in the person's own published words, read aloud: an inquiry statement, letters, a newspaper account, a written report and a first-person memoir. Together they ask what happens to a warning once it has been delivered, and who it belongs to after that.
Hosted by Eli, performed by synthetic voices.
Facts and sources
Every fact used in this episode, with the sources it was checked against. Download as data
189 of 189 recorded lines matched the checked script.
Emma Ehrenfeld was the telegraph operator at the Pennsylvania Railroad tower in South Fork, upstream of Johnstown, on May 31, 1889.
Ehrenfeld’s warning went to Mineral Point operator William Pickerill, who used railroad messengers to carry it on when the telegraph lines were down.
R.F. Shade at AO tower, about a mile and a half east of Conemaugh, testified that a foreman from Mineral Point brought him a dam warning around 12:30 p.m., which he sent to “R.P.” at Pittsburgh and the Conemaugh yardmaster, and that a second warning came between 2 and 3 p.m., which he sent to Conemaugh and then to Pittsburgh.
Emma North, the Pennsylvania Railroad operator at Johnstown, testified that she received the dam warnings between 2 and 4 p.m. and delivered them by hand, including to a Mr. Trump on a special train.
For years rumors that the South Fork dam would break had proved false, and Johnstown residents had come to treat the warnings as remote possibilities.
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The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which owned the dam, never replaced its removed discharge pipes and failed to maintain it.
Ehrenfeld survived. In 1890 she married a physician, Dr. Joseph Glass, later lived in Pittsburgh, and died in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1943.
In January 1856 keeper Samuel Burgess sailed from Matinicus Rock to Rockland, Maine, for food, medicine for his sick wife and lamp supplies, because a scheduled supply delivery had not arrived.
Storms kept any boat from landing on Matinicus Rock for four weeks, leaving Abbie Burgess, born in 1839, to tend the two lights with her mother and younger sisters.
Abbie married Isaac Grant, son of the next keeper John Grant, and they served at Matinicus Rock until 1875 and then at Whitehead Light until 1890, where Isaac was the keeper.
Abbie Burgess Grant died in Portland, Maine, on June 16, 1892. In 1945 the historian Edward Rowe Snow placed a small lighthouse memorial on her grave in Spruce Head Cemetery.
Gustav Kobbe, who visited Matinicus Rock long after Abbie’s time there, described a cow named Daisy in Century Magazine in 1897, while Abbie’s own writings mention the family’s hens but no cow.
Bride testified that Phillips asked the captain whether to send CQD and was told to do it at once, and that Phillips sent both CQD and SOS.
Cyril Evans, the Californian’s wireless operator, testified that at 9:05 p.m. New York time on April 14 he told the Titanic his ship was stopped and surrounded by ice. The Titanic’s operator told him to shut up because he was busy working Cape Race.
Harold Cottam of the Carpathia testified that he picked up the Titanic’s distress call while waiting to confirm a message with the Parisian, and that he was not off duty but was at his instrument.
After the rescue, Bride testified that he had a sprained left foot and numbness in his right foot from exposure, and that he helped the exhausted Cottam with wireless work aboard the Carpathia.
Bride gave his story to a New York Times reporter in the Carpathia’s wireless cabin, with access arranged through Marconi; his report read into the Senate record says he received 500 dollars, though in another session he testified to 1,000 dollars, and he gave the reporter brief notes that were expanded into the article.
On July 31, 1985, Roger Boisjoly sent a memo to R.K. Lund, Morton Thiokol’s vice president of engineering, warning that an O-ring failure in a field joint could cause a catastrophe with loss of human life.
Boisjoly’s concern started with the January 1985 flight, the coldest launch until then, in which he saw hot gas blow-by on two field joints.
After the memo, Thiokol formed an official seal task force on August 15, 1985, headed by D.M. Ketner. In an October 4, 1985 activity report Boisjoly complained that the task force lacked support and resources.
At the January 27, 1986 teleconference, Thiokol engineers recommended against launching below 53 degrees Fahrenheit. After an off-line caucus, Thiokol management reversed that and recommended launch.
Jerry Mason later testified that he hoped the engineering-hat remark had not pressured Lund but that it could be read that way. NASA’s Lawrence Mulloy acknowledged his ‘next April’ remark but said it was taken out of context.
Boisjoly testified to the Rogers Commission on February 25, 1986, and referred to his July 31, 1985 memo on O-ring erosion.
After testifying, Boisjoly was isolated at Thiokol and took sick leave in July 1986. He later worked as a forensic engineer and lectured on engineering ethics, received the AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, and died of cancer on January 6, 2012.
In her statement to the Pennsylvania Railroad’s inquiry into the flood in 1889, the South Fork telegraph operator Emma Ehrenfeld began with the morning of May 31: “I was working at South Fork in the telegraph tower. I went on duty at 7 o’clock in the morning. It was raining very hard when I went down. I found orders there to hold all trains east for orders.”
Around midday, as she told the railroad’s 1889 inquiry, a warning came through her door: “Then, about noon, I judge it was, a man came in very much excited; he says Notify Johnstown right away about the dam. He says, Its raising very fast and there’s danger of the reservoir breaking I said Who told you all this?”
With the wires to Johnstown already down and a messenger she didn’t trust, Ehrenfeld explained to the inquiry how she weighed it: “Had it been person I knew very well, or if he had given me a message, it would have been different, but he just told me this in a very excited manner, and I scarcely knew what to do; but of course, I knew the water was high in the river, and thought I would do the best I could, so I called the operator at Mineral Point; he was the only one I could work with west; and I told him, and we fixed up a message, and I asked him to send it.”
The warning had to go part of the way on foot, and months later, in her 1889 statement, she still didn’t know what became of it: “He was to send it by a man to the next office west, and they were to forward it to Conemaugh and Johnstown by wire. Whether it ever reached Johnstown, I am unable to say.”
Then came three o’clock. Ehrenfeld described the scene in the tower to the railroad’s investigators: “About 3 o’clock or probably a minute or two after, as I was sitting there, of course we were waiting for it, and the engineer and the conductor of the 1165 were in the office at the time, and it seems were looking out of the window; I was sitting with my back to the window;”
When the men saw people running outside, she told the inquiry: “I looked up and went to the window, and just then, it seemed the cry arose that it was coming, and he looked out of the window and said something about the reservoir going, and he and the conductor started down stairs. I then went to the window and looked out and saw people running, and some were screaming, and some hollowed for me to come, and I looked out of the window on the side of the river, and saw it coming.”
Emma Ehrenfeld testified: “It just seemed like a mountain coming, and it seemed close; of course, I don’t know just how close it was, but I knew I must go if I wanted to get out, and I started and ran down the stairs without waiting to get my hat or anything; and there is a coal tipple about opposite the office, and I ran down across the track, and up those steps. It was a very short time, not more than two minutes until the office was taken.”
In a letter to a friend about the storm of January 1856, when she was a teenager alone on Matinicus Rock with her invalid mother and younger sisters, Abbie Burgess wrote: “Early in the day, as the tide arose, the sea made a complete breach over the rock, washing every movable thing away, and of the old dwelling not one stone was left upon another.”
- Abbie Burgess, Teenaged Heroine of Matinicus Rock Light - New England Historical Societynewenglandhistoricalsociety.com
- weather Archives - Page 15 of 17 - New England Historical Societynewenglandhistoricalsociety.com
- Matinicus Island Archives - New England Historical Societynewenglandhistoricalsociety.com
With the house filling with water, she moved her family into the lighthouse tower, and in the same letter she wrote: “The new dwelling was flooded and the windows had to be secured to prevent the violence of the spray from breaking them in. As the tide came, the sea rose higher and higher, till the only endurable places were the light-towers. If they stood we were saved, otherwise our fate was only too certain. But for some reason, I know not why, I had no misgivings, and went on with my work as usual.”
Then, as she told her friend, she did something her mother advised her not to do: “You know the hens were our only companions. Becoming convinced, as the gale increased, that unless they were brought into the house they would be lost, I said to mother: I must try to save them. She advised me not to attempt it. The thought, however, of parting with them without an effort was not to be endured, so seizing a basket, I ran out a few yards after the rollers had passed and the sea fell off a little, with the water knee deep, to the coop, and rescued all but one.”
- Abbie Burgess, Teenaged Heroine of Matinicus Rock Light - New England Historical Societynewenglandhistoricalsociety.com
- rockland maine Archives - New England Historical Societynewenglandhistoricalsociety.com
- coast guard Archives - Page 2 of 3 - New England Historical Societynewenglandhistoricalsociety.com
And she described how close it was: “It was the work of a moment, and I was back in the house with the door fastened, but I was none too quick, for at that instant my little sister, standing at the window, exclaimed: Oh, look! look there! the worst sea is coming.”
No boat could reach the rock for weeks afterward, and in her letter Abbie Burgess summed it up this way: “For four weeks, owing to rough weather, no landing could be effected on the Rock. During this time we were without the assistance of any male member of our family. Though at times greatly exhausted with my labors, not once did the lights fail. Under God I was able to perform all my accustomed duties as well as my father’s.”
In that same 1891 letter, written at Whitehead Light, she wrote: “Many nights I have watched the lights my part of the night, and then could not sleep the rest of the night, thinking nervously what might happen should the lights fail.”
Thirty-five years later, in a letter she wrote in 1891 while keeping Whitehead Light with her husband, Abbie Burgess Grant wrote: “Sometimes I think the time is not far distant when I shall climb these lighthouse stairs no more. It has almost seemed to me that the light was part of myself.”
And she closed that 1891 letter, written a year before she died, with a wish: “I wonder if the care of the lighthouse will follow my soul after it has left this worn out body! If I ever have a gravestone, I would like it in the form of a lighthouse or beacon.”
In the account he dictated to a New York Times reporter, published April 19, 1912, Bride described the first minutes of the distress call, when nobody in the wireless room believed the ship was in danger: “The humour of the situation appealed to me, and I cut in with a little remark that made us all laugh, including the captain. Send ‘S.O.S.,’ I said, ‘it’s the new call, and it may be your last chance to send it. ‘ Phillips, with a laugh, changed the signal to ‘S.O.S.’”
Later in that same New York Times account, Bride described what he saw when he stepped out of the wireless room near the end: “I went out on deck and looked around. The water was pretty close up to the boat deck. There was a great scramble aft, and how poor Phillips worked through it I don’t know. He was a brave man. I learned to love him that night, and I suddenly felt for him a great reverence to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about. I will never live to forget the work Phillips did for the last awful fifteen minutes.”
In his April 27, 1912 letter to W. R. Cross, traffic manager of the Marconi Company, which he handed to the Senate inquiry, Bride wrote: “Leaving Mr. Phillips operating, I went to our sleeping cabin, and got all our money together, returning to find a fireman or coal trimmer gently relieving Mr. Phillips of his lifebelt. There immediately followed a general scrimmage with the three of us.”
Back in the New York Times account, Bride remembered the moment the two operators split up: “From aft came the tunes of the ship’s band, playing the ragtime tune, ‘Autumn. ‘ Phillips ran aft, and that was the last I ever saw of him alive.”
Bride told the Times how he ended up in the sea while helping some men who couldn’t get a collapsible lifeboat off the deck: “I went up to them, and was just lending a hand when a large wave came awash of the deck. The big wave carried the boat off. I had hold of an oar-lock and I went off with it. The next I knew I was in the boat. But that wasn’t all; I was in the boat, and the boat was upside down, and I was under it. I remember realising I was wet through, and that whatever happened I must breathe, for I was under water. I knew I had to fight for it, and I did.”
Swimming in the freezing water, Bride watched the Titanic’s last moments, and he described them to the Times this way: “I felt I simply had to get away from the ship. She was a beautiful sight then. Smoke and sparks were rushing out of her funnels. There must have been an explosion, but we heard none. We only saw a big stream of sparks. The ship was gradually turning on her nose -just like a duck does that goes down for a dive. I had only one thing on my mind - to get away from the suction.”
Writing later about January 27, 1986, the day an overnight low of 18 degrees was forecast for the launch site, Roger Boisjoly explained why he pushed his managers so hard not to launch: “My whole being was driven to action for this cause because of my memory of my January, 1985, participation in the inspection of the hardware from the previous coldest launch which had massive hot gas blow-by.”
During that evening’s teleconference with NASA, as the engineers went through their charts, Boisjoly remembered: “Up to this point in the telecon, I was asked several times by NASA to quantify my concerns, but I said that I could not since the only data I had was already presented and that I had been trying to get more data since last October (1985). At this comment, the General Manager of MTI gave me a scolding look as if to say, Why did you tell them that?”
Thiokol had recommended against launching, and NASA’s Larry Mulloy called the data inconclusive. Boisjoly described what happened next: “Just as Larry Mulloy gave his conclusion, Joe Kilminster asked for a five-minute, off-line caucus to re-evaluate the data and as soon as the mute button was pushed, our General Manager, Jerry Mason, said in a soft voice, We have to make a management decision. I became furious when I heard this, because I sensed that an attempt would be made by executive-level management to reverse the no-launch decision.”
After his colleague Arnie Thompson tried to sketch the joint for the managers and gave up, Boisjoly made his own last attempt: “I then grabbed the photographic evidence showing the hot gas blow-by comparisons from previous flights and placed it on the table in view of the managers and somewhat angered, admonished them to look at the photos and not ignore what they were telling us; namely, that low temperature indeed caused significantly more hot gas blow-by to occur in the joints.”
Boisjoly wrote that the managers would not answer him: “No one in management wanted to discuss the facts; they just would not respond verbally to either Arnie or me. I felt totally helpless at that moment and that further argument was fruitless, so I, too, stopped pressing my case.”
With the engineers left out, four senior executives decided among themselves. Boisjoly recalled: “During the closed manager’s discussion, Jerry Mason asked the other managers in a low voice if he was the only one who wanted to fly and no one answered him. At the end of the discussion, Mason turned to Bob Lund, Vice President of Engineering at MTI, and told him to take off his engineering hat and to put on his management hat.”
Thiokol told NASA to go ahead, and NASA agreed without asking any questions. Boisjoly wrote what he did that night: “The change in the launch decision upset me so much that I left the room immediately after the telecon was disconnected and felt badly defeated and angry when I wrote the following entry in my notebook. I sincerely hope that this launch does not result in a catastrophe. I personally do not agree with some of the statements made in Joe Kilminster’s summary stating that SRM- 25 (Challenger) is okay to fly.”
The next morning, Bob Ebeling encouraged Boisjoly to come in and watch the launch at Thiokol, and Boisjoly sat on the floor near the screen leaning against Ebeling’s legs, later writing that Ebeling whispered they had dodged a bullet as the vehicle cleared the tower, whispered a prayer of thanks at about T+60 seconds, and that the vehicle exploded just 13 seconds later.
Checked but not used (2)
Hettie Ogle, who managed the Western Union office in Johnstown, sent updates on the rising water all day and died in the flood; the message “This is my last message” is attributed to her.
According to New England Lighthouse Stories, in a second storm in 1857 her father and brother were both away from the rock for 21 days and the family lived on one cup of cornmeal mush and an egg a day, though other accounts place this rationing in the 1856 storm.
Removed during checking (1)
In a letter to the Marconi Company dated April 27, 1912, which he handed to the Senate investigators, Bride explained the ice warning he let wait that Sunday afternoon: "During Sunday afternoon, toward 5 o'clock, I was called by the Californian (call letters MWL) with an ice report, but I did not immediately answer, as I was writing up the abstracts; and also it used to take us some considerable time to start up the motor and alternator, it not being advisable to leave them working, as the alternator was liable to run hot."
