Above is a publishers’ video about the book “Titanic’s Last Secrets,” reviewed Oct. 5 by W.E. Mueller. This is the latest exploration about how the Titanic sank (and according to this book, James Cameron’s famous movie has it wrong).

Longtime readers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch may also be familiar with the old story of how its reporter, Carlos F. Hurd, scooped the world with the first interview with Titanic survivors. That story, at least,  hasn’t changed since 1912, and Mueller recounts Hurd’s triumph:

By W.E. Mueller

It was almost midnight, and seaman Harold Cottam was getting ready to retire. Cottam, the wireless telegrapher for the ocean liner Carpathia, was closing down the ship’s Marconi Room, as it was called. No more telegrams, tapped out in Morse code, would be sent or received. Cottam was unlacing his boots, but still had his telegraphers’ “listening apparatus” strapped to his head. That’s when he heard the code letters CQD — the distress call for help. That was quickly followed by MGY — the call sign of the new, massive liner Titanic. She was sinking.
In a cabin below the Marconi Room, Carlos Hurd, 36, and his wife Katherine were asleep. They were on vacation. When they awoke in the morning, the ship’s engines were quiet. Hurd soon learned the Titanic had sunk and the Carpathia was taking on survivors. Ralph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, another Pulitzer newspaper, telegraphed Hurd to write the story and wire it back. But the captain of the Carpathia, Arthur Roston, had imposed a news blackout and Pulitzer’s message was never delivered.

Roston confiscated all the Carpathia’s stationery. Hurd, however, realized the magnitude of the story and began interviewing survivors, writing on scraps of paper, including toilet paper. His wife sat on his notes in their cabin to keep them from being impounded.  Hurd knew the Carpathia would be greeted in New York’s harbor by tugboats full of journalists and photographers. He wrapped his story in waterproof materials, then tied the bundle to a sealed cigar box and attached champagne corks for added buoyancy. On deck, approaching the dock, Hurd saw a colleague on a tugboat, and breaking free of a sailor’s grasp, threw his package overboard.
His 5,000 word story filled the front page of the Post-Dispatch, the World, and dozens of other newspapers around the globe.