At 8:27 pm the night after the ship sank a wireless message apparently signed White Star Line was received saying “Titanic proceeding to Halifax, passengers will probably land there Wednesday all safe” was received by Congressman Hughes of West Virginia. Who sent this message, if it was indeed one single message and not a confused mix-up of several messages, is unknown.

So, first, wireless telegraphs were what were being relied on, and most papers basically ‘played telephone’, relaying the same information over and over from few sources. There was an order of precedence in general for telegraphic messages aboard the ships: first, ship service messages; second, personal telegraphs; and finally, press news telegraphs. 

Because of the volume of traffic, President Taft eventually ordered that all wireless activity that wasn’t from the Navy to be silenced so the Carpathia (which carried all those who were rescued) could get it’s telegraphs through. Still finding that there were little information being received, he asked a Naval ship to contact the Carpathia and find out what was going on, but due to miscommunication (different types of Morse code - American and British - basically a language barrier) this was mostly a waste of time. 

Another reason was that it took three days for the Carpathia to reach the dock in New York, so there were no personal interviews conducted before the 18th, which left some people holding out hope. 

Then, the White Star Line was roundly admonished for giving false information or withholding what they knew, although they claimed that this was solely because, while they had it on good authority that the ship had gone down and had an approximate number of passengers saved, they wanted to confirm with the Carpathia’s captain to prevent undue anguish to the relatives of those who might possibly still be alive or give false hope to those who had lost someone. 

The fact that J. Bruce Ismay (president of the White Star line) sent multiple telegraphs from the Carpathia asking that the Cedric (another White Star liner) be held up in New York to await the Carpathia’s arrival to carry himself and the surviving crew of the Titanic back to England at the first possible moment was considered suspect and senate subpoenas were issued that blocked this move.

There were also reports that the wireless messages stating the Titanic was safe were from amateur pranksters.

The Eagle, Bryan, Texas, April 16, 1912

The Scranton Truth, Pennsylvania, April 16, 1912

Nevada State Journal, Reno, Nevada, April 16, 1912

The Buffalo Commercial, New York, April 22, 1912

Finally, it was speculated that employees of Marconi Wireless Company, specifically Chief Engineer Sammis, and possibly the inventor Marconi himself, in collusion with the two wireless operators aboard the Carpatha, were involved in withholding the information in order to profit off the details of the sinking by selling the exclusive rights to the New York Times. Both operators, Cottam and Bride, gave their exclusive stories and received $750 and $1000 respectively from the New York Times thanks to Sammis.

Marconi said that, while he did say the operators were free to make as much money as they could from the story, he certainly never ordered them to withhold any information. 

The San Francisco Call, California, April 26, 1912

It was said that Sammis had ordered the telegraph operators aboard the Carpathia to “keep your mouth shut” and it was speculated that this was a gag order about the Titanic sinking in general. However, these messages were sent to the Carpathia only about an hour and a half before they docked. 

Sammis admitted it was true he’d authorized the telegrams in his name and helped set up the meeting with the reporters, but that he had only meant for the operators to not tell anyone about their personal experiences before speaking to the journalists, and justified his actions by claiming that he did it with the best of intentions. He said he was only trying to help the operators, one who had taken part in the rescue and one who survived the sinking, to make the most money possible, that he was trying to “spruce the men up, make them feel happy”, that he had done “nothing he was ashamed of”.

He was also asked if he had ordered the operators to keep quiet before this, to which he answered no, that there were 150 - 200 other vessels that also needed to use the stations and that it would be unfair for the Carpathia to monopolize them all the time, especially because the Carpathia’s messages needed to be retransmitted by another ship to reach shore some of the time. Cottam, the Carpathia’s wireless operator, also denied he’d been asked to “kill any message regarding the Titanic story” by Sammis or anyone else.

The Topeka Daily Capital, Kansas, April 18, 1912

Many of the messages sent to the Carpathia from people asking for updates went unanswered. Marconi himself had sent a multiple messages to the Carpathia asking why no news was forthcoming, about whether people like Astor, Guggenheim, and Isidor Straus had been rescued, and received no answer. Even the President’s request for information, specifically about Archibald Butt, was ignored (although that one wasn’t signed in his name - they probably would’ve answered it if it had been!).

Marconi explained that this was probably because the Carpathia’s operators were busy sending personal messages to victim’s friends and family members. The Senate inquiry cast doubt over this, wondering why they would pointedly avoid answering messages from the owner of the company that employed them, and that it seemed that the operators were not doing very much telegraphing during these days at all - although Sammis reported the two men had sent upwards of 5000 words or 500 separate personal messages. 

Harold Cottam gave testimony at the inquiry that he hadn’t been answering any requests for information because he was busy with official traffic and passengers personal messages (like Marconi said and like protocol demanded).

Cottam recounted that on Tuesday, after 36 hours with no sleep and almost 24 hours of constant telegraphing, he fell asleep at the job because he was so exhausted. Harold Bride, the second operator of the Titanic, came to relieve him, despite injuries to both of his feet and his back. He had been resting in the Carpathia’s hospital. From that time Bride continued to help Cottam, preparing messages to be sent and taking over when Cottam rested.