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The students focused on the events of the night of 14–15 April 1912, placing particular emphasis on the communication between the R.M.S Titanic and the other ships involved, as well as the communication that took place in the aftermath of the sinking. Four key exchanges were selected: the warning message from the S.S. Mesaba to the R.M.S Titanic; the distress message from the Titanic to the R.M.S Carpathia and its response; the light signal from the Titanic to the S.S. Californian; and finally, the press coverage directed at the public the day after the sinking
The Exhibition
To bring their analysis to life, the students built a physical installation recreating the Atlantic Ocean with handmade models of the ships involved, built from cardboard, toothpicks, and thread, painted by hand. Crêpe paper was used for the sea and the icebergs were fashioned from paper and paint. Each section of the table was dedicated to one of the four key exchanges that took place on the night of 14 to 15 April 1912. |
This group were inspired by one of the most documented maritime disasters ever, claiming that it was not simply failure on navigating when the Titanic sunk during the early hours of 15 April 1912, but rather also a culmination of numerous failures in communication. With around 1,500 lives lost, the stakes of the story gave the project its weight, and the group chose to explore how failed, distorted and ignored messages between ships contributed to the scale of the tragedy.
The Communication Theories
To make sense of what went wrong that night, the students turned to two communication models. The first, Shannon's, looks at how information travels from a sender to a receiver, and treats "noise" as anything that might distort a message along the way, interference that raises entropy and chips away at clarity. When applied to the Titanic, the model becomes almost uncomfortably apt: an overloaded telegraph, a fogbound sea, and a collective overconfidence in the ship's supposed invincibility all fed into a chain of messages that were either garbled, ignored, or never sent at all. The second model, Lasswell's, asks a deceptively simple question: who says what, through which channel, to whom, and with what effect? The students focused on the press coverage that followed, exploring how newspapers didn't just report the disaster but framed it and how that framing built enough public pressure to bring about lasting changes in maritime safety regulations. 
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The first was the warning message sent by the S.S. Mesaba to the Titanic, signalling the presence of large quantities of ice and numerous icebergs. The message was acknowledged by one of the two telegraph operators on board but overwhelmed by the volume of telegrams being sent that evening, he never passed it on to the captain. The students explained that according to Shannon's model, this cannot strictly be considered a case of noise, as the problem did not lie between sender and receiver, but between the receiver and the final destination of the message.
Several hours later, at 11:40pm, the Titanic struck the iceberg. The operator sent a distress signal CQD to the R.M.S Carpathia, located more than 300 kilometres away. The Carpathia decoded the message correctly and set course for the scene, responding in morse that it was on its way. The students noted that this is the one exchange where, according to Shannon's model, communication actually worked, and yet the Carpathia arrived one hour and ten minutes after the Titanic had completely sunk, rescuing only the 705 passengers already in lifeboats. The students also examined the light signal sent by the Titanic to the S.S. Californian, located approximately thirty kilometres away. Due to the refraction of light in the fog, the Californian interpreted the distress signals as ordinary navigation lights and sailed on. The students observed that the level of entropy, already high since the Mesaba's undelivered warning, continued to rise with each failed exchange.
For the fourth scenario, the students applied Lasswell's model to the press coverage that followed, examining how newspapers reported on the tragedy and how the wave of emotion that followed led to significant changes in maritime safety regulations, including the permanent replacement of the distress code CQD by SOS. A morse code alphabet and decoding tree were also made available to visitors, inviting them to decipher for themselves the actual messages exchanged between the ships on the night of the sinking.
Several hours later, at 11:40pm, the Titanic struck the iceberg. The operator sent a distress signal CQD to the R.M.S Carpathia, located more than 300 kilometres away. The Carpathia decoded the message correctly and set course for the scene, responding in morse that it was on its way. The students noted that this is the one exchange where, according to Shannon's model, communication actually worked, and yet the Carpathia arrived one hour and ten minutes after the Titanic had completely sunk, rescuing only the 705 passengers already in lifeboats. The students also examined the light signal sent by the Titanic to the S.S. Californian, located approximately thirty kilometres away. Due to the refraction of light in the fog, the Californian interpreted the distress signals as ordinary navigation lights and sailed on. The students observed that the level of entropy, already high since the Mesaba's undelivered warning, continued to rise with each failed exchange.
For the fourth scenario, the students applied Lasswell's model to the press coverage that followed, examining how newspapers reported on the tragedy and how the wave of emotion that followed led to significant changes in maritime safety regulations, including the permanent replacement of the distress code CQD by SOS. A morse code alphabet and decoding tree were also made available to visitors, inviting them to decipher for themselves the actual messages exchanged between the ships on the night of the sinking.
