Hi Steven,
Have a look at George Turnball's evidence at the British Inquiry. He was high up in Marconi (Deputy Manager) and appears to have been responsible for collecting together all the relevant Marconi PVs for the British Inquiry. In theory, the PVs were written up from the individual Marconi telegraph/wireless forms at the time. A large number of these Marconi forms were examined when Turnball gave evidence, plus the PVs.
You can go to the Bodleian Library in Oxford and look at what survives in rows of boxes and files.
The wireless operator had a pad of Marconi message forms that the messages were written upon, then compiled in the PV. This was the theory. The individual Marconi forms were supposed to be retained, then handed in. Very few ships that night followed this proceedure. The messages were not subject to a 'fee' being navigational status messages or ship to ship MSG's official and 'chatty', and very few wrote them down.
John Durrant on the Mount Temple wrote them all down as apparently did also the Ypiranga wireless operator.
There are huge gaps in the PV of the
Carpathia, and the Virginian (who sent the 'official' CQD position to the Californian at 6 am 15th April 1912). It is also apparent that Evans on the Californian did not keep proper records.
One of the problems with the Titanic and the Californian is reconstructing the wireless messages from other ships' surviving records, which requires a great deal of research and interpretation and analysis, and very few people have actually gone to Oxford to see what survives in the Marconi Archive. I hope to redress this very soon!
Cheers,
Julian
