In March 1912, Phillips was sent to
Belfast, Ireland, to be the senior wireless operator on board
Titanic for her maiden voyage. He was joined by junior wireless operator
Harold Bride. Stories have appeared that Phillips knew Bride before
Titanic, but Bride insisted they had never met before Belfast.
Titanic sailed for
New York City, United States, from
Southampton, England, on 10 April 1912. Phillips celebrated his 25th birthday the day after the voyage began. On 13 April, Phillips and Bride, spent most of the night before repairing the wireless machine, which had broken down the day before. Bride explained the issue later on, in a letter to the Marconi Company:
Ice reports During the voyage Phillips and Bride received ice warnings and other navigational information from other ships. Amongst the ice reports they received leading up to the night of 14 April were from the , , , , , and , all of which were sent to the bridge and acknowledged by the captain or the ship's operator. Of these, only the
Californian was received by Bride while the rest were likely received by Phillips. At 22:55, Phillips was interrupted by
Californians
Cyril Evans, the only wireless operator aboard
Californian, who said, "Say old man, we are stopped surrounded by ice." Due to
Californians relative proximity, and the fact that both Evans and Phillips were using
spark-gap wireless sets whose signals bled across the spectrum and were impossible to tune out, meant that Evans's signal was strong and loud in Phillips's ears, while the signals from Cape Race were faint to Phillips and inaudible to Evans. Though some have argued that that these two communications led to the failure of the iceberg being spotted, several ice warnings from other ships had already been received and communicated to Captain
Edward Smith on the bridge so he was aware that there was ice in the area before the warnings of
Mesaba and
Californian came in. Additionally, both lookouts were told to keep an eye out for "small ice and growlers" by Second Officer
Charles Lightoller on the night of disaster. Phillips was able to contact which headed for the scene. After taking a quick break, Phillips returned to the wireless room and reported to Bride that the
forward part of the ship was flooded, and they should put on more clothes and
lifebelts. Bride began to get ready, while Phillips went back to work on the wireless machine. The wireless power was almost completely out shortly after 02:00, when Captain Smith arrived and told the men they had done their duty and were relieved. Bride later remembered being moved by the way Phillips continued working. While their backs were turned, a crew member (either a
stoker or
trimmer) sneaked in and attempted to steal Phillips's lifebelt. Bride, outraged at the man's behaviour, attacked the man and might have hit him with an object. Shortly afterwards, they abandoned the wireless room, leaving the motionless crewman where he fell. The men then split up, Bride heading forward and Phillips heading
aft.
Death Conflicting and contradictory information led to popular belief that Phillips possibly managed to make it to the overturned
Collapsible Boat B, which was in the charge of Second Officer Charles Lightoller, along with
Harold Bride but did not last the night. In his
The New York Times interview, Bride said that a man from boat B was dead, and that as he boarded
Carpathia, he saw that the dead man was Phillips. It is clear from Gracie and other 1912 evidence that the man on the upturned collapsible who called out the names of approaching ships was Harold Bride, not Jack Phillips, as Lightoller thought in 1935. Lightoller's 1912 testimony contradicts his 1935 statements that he saw Phillips aboard B and that the body taken off the boat was Phillips. Salon Steward Thomas Whiteley may have been Bride's source for the story; in a press interview, Whiteley claimed that Phillips had been aboard the collapsible, died and was taken aboard
Carpathia. As no other witness in 1912 claimed Phillips' body was recovered, and his name was never mentioned by any source aboard
Carpathia as being one of the four bodies buried at sea, it is possible that Whiteley was simply mistaken in his identification, or that Phillips was aboard Collapsible B his but body was not recovered. ==Legacy==