Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/163

 ing it to my collection but to go to Paris direct and get the instead.

In this choice I was perhaps influenced somewhat by getting a job as second wireless officer on the ', a fine fast passenger express steamer of the '. This German ship—as in fact all other transatlantic liners—was equipped with the Marconi system and this grouched the German officers to the last limits of despair. A little newspaper was published on board every day and, of course, the news in it came via wireless. Whenever we had trouble in getting the messages from the stations at Well-fleet, Mass., or Poldhu, England—as was always the case more or less when we were in mid-ocean—the paper which the Germans ran printed them anyway just as we took them down, and then they commented on what a rotten system Marconi’s was.

The Kronprinzessin Cecilie touched at Plymouth, England, and then sailed across the English channel and touched again at Cherbourg, France, where I threw up the job, as my destination was Paris, and I arrived there a few hours later.