Cyril Furmstone Evans

Cyril Furmstone Evans (1892 – 1959) was a British wireless telegraphist who was sole operator aboard the the night the struck an iceberg and sank in the early hours of 15 April 1912.

Earlier, on 14 April, Evans had sent an ice report to the Titanic and called the ship up again around 11:00 pm. During the sinking, when Titanic was sending distress signals and the ship was firing rockets, he was off duty, having turned in around 11:30 pm. He was not woken up by the crew until hours after the disaster occurred.

Evans was subsequently called to testify at both the American and British inquiries into the disaster. Among other changes, the disaster and inquiries led to the policy of 24-hour watches being mandated aboard ships to prevent any ship from missing a distress call.

Early life Not much is known about Evans' early life. He was born in 1892 in Croydon, Surrey, and joined the Marconi Company in 1911 after going to the British School of Telegraphy, along with Harold Bride. His first assignment was aboard the where he made one voyage, before he was transferred to the which had recently been installed with a wireless.

Sinking of RMS Titanic In April 1912, when Titanic embarked on her maiden voyage, Evans was making his third voyage on the Californian, under Captain Stanley Lord, westbound for Boston. He was the sole wireless operator on board. At the time Titanic on-duty wireless operator, Jack Phillips, was busy clearing a backlog of passengers' messages with the wireless station at Cape Race, Newfoundland, away. Evans sent an informal message of "Say old man, we are stopped and surrounded by ice." Due to the proximity of the two ships, the signal was heard very strongly on Titanic and drowned out a separate message Phillips had been in the process of receiving from Cape Race, prompting Phillips to tell Evans to stop transmitting with the signal "DDD" which Evans interpretted as: "Keep out; I am working Cape Race."

Evans had not prefixed the message with the letters, "MSG," which stood for Master Service Gram and had also failed to provide their position. Instead, he listened in for a while before he switched off his wireless equipment and went to bed.

In the early morning hours of 15 April 1912, Phillips communicated with the nearest ship responding to the SOS call that he sent out on the orders of Titanic Captain Edward Smith. The ship was , which steamed to the rescue of the stricken liner but was 4 hours away, while the Californian was much closer to Titanic. Although Lord's officers informed him of the large ship, which had stopped and was visible to them, firing rockets, neither Lord nor his officers thought to wake Evans, instead trying to communicate with Titanic via Morse lamp. Evans was woken when it was too late and learned via wireless what had happened to Titanic. The Californian, after looking for any survivors that had been missed by Carpathia, found none and continued on its route to America.

Later life Evans continued his service with the Marconi Company and its successor companies (Eastern Telegraph Company and Cable & Wireless: the later part of his career was spent as manager for Cable and Wireless on the West Indian island of St Lucia) for the rest of his life. He also served at sea in World War I and World War II, running mobile telecommunications for the British Army in North Africa and then Italy.

He married and raised a family. He died of a heart attack around July 1959.

Cultural portrayals In the 1958 film A Night to Remember, Evans was portrayed by Geoffrey Bayldon. In a deleted scene of the 1997 film Titanic, he was portrayed by Adam Barker, son of comedian Ronnie Barker, in a deleted scene, along with Third Officer Charles Groves of the Californian.