“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!”—The Call That Saves Lives

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“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!”—The Call That Saves Lives

Fire and smoke engulfed the fishing vessel! Every person on board was in serious danger. “Without the captain making the Mayday call, the ‘Nautical Legacy’ would never have been found,” said a Coast Guard official. The Canadian Coast Guard responded quickly and was able to save the entire crew. *

“MAYDAY! Mayday! Mayday!” Those words heard over the radio announce a life-threatening emergency and are a call for immediate assistance. Is the Mayday call effective? In 2008, the U.S. Coast Guard went on more than 24,000 rescue missions. They saved 4,910 lives—an average of 13 lives per day—and assisted more than 31,000 people in distress.

Why, though, do we use the expression “Mayday”? And before radio transmission, how did ships in distress signal for aid?

Early Methods of Calling for Help

In 1588, the Santa Maria de la Rosa of the Spanish Armada fired her guns as a distress call when drifting in a violent storm. The ship sank with no reported survivors. In other instances, early sailors hoisted flags designed to convey a distress call. Even now, a ship displaying a white flag with a red diagonal cross is known internationally as calling for help.

Sailors in the 1760’s began learning a visual code called the semaphore system. To use this code, a signaler with two hand-held flags would imitate the hands on a clockface. Each position of “time” the signaler used reflected a different letter or number.

However, flags, cannon fire, and visual signals worked only if others were close enough to see or hear the distress call. Often, the crew in peril had little hope that help would arrive. How would the situation improve?

More-Effective Calls for Help

A gigantic leap forward in communication technology came in the 1840’s. Samuel Morse invented a code that allowed telegraph operators to send messages along a length of wire by means of a hand-operated transmitter key. As long as the operator held the key down, the person at the other end of the wire could detect an electrical impulse. Morse assigned a unique combination of short and long sounds or dots and dashes to each letter and number.

To employ Morse code at sea, sailors used bright beams of light instead of the sounds sent by telegraph operators. The signaler would expose a beam of light for a short length of time to symbolize the dot and lengthen the time the beam was exposed to symbolize the dash. Signalers soon began using a simple and unique call for help consisting of three dots, three dashes, and three more dots, representing the letters SOS. *

Fortunately, the scope and distance of distress signals did not stop there. Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean in 1901. SOS messages could now be sent using radio waves instead of beams of light. Still, radio operators could not yet vocalize a distress call. The expression “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” was yet to come.

Spoken words were finally heard across the airwaves in 1906 when Reginald Fessenden transmitted a program of speech and music. Sailors with radio equipment heard Fessenden’s broadcast from 50 miles away [80 km]. In 1915, many more people were thrilled to hear live speech transmitted from Arlington, Virginia, U.S.A., to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France—a distance of 8,800 miles [more than 14,000 km]! And imagine the excitement of sailors on the S.S. America in 1922 when the first ship-to-shore radio conversation was held between Deal Beach, New Jersey, U.S.A., and their ship, which was 400 miles [more than 600 km] out to sea.

Unifying the Call for Help

Radio operators in the 1920’s and 1930’s quickly began talking to each other. Since crews at sea may speak different languages, how could a captain send a priority distress call that would be universally understood? The International Radiotelegraph Convention answered this concern in 1927 by adopting “Mayday” as the international distress call. *

We can be thankful that communications have continued to improve. For example, radar and global positioning systems have replaced cannons and flag signals. Also, radios have become standard equipment, and rescue agencies monitor the airwaves and are on constant alert. As in the case of the Nautical Legacy, no matter where or when an emergency arises, the call “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” can likely be heard. Unlike past generations, if you are in distress at sea, rather than having only faint hope of rescue, you can confidently expect to get help.

[Footnotes]

^ par. 2 Reported in the book True Stories of Rescue and Survival—Canada’s Unknown Heroes

^ par. 11 The letters SOS were chosen because they could be sent and perceived easily. They had no particular meaning.

^ par. 15 “Mayday” is to be repeated three times to show clear intent and avoid confusion of the word with any other.

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The “Nautical Legacy” engulfed in fire and smoke

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[Picture on page 28]

To employ Morse code at sea, sailors used bright beams of light instead of the sounds sent by telegraph operators

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AWAKE!