The messages burst from the RMS Titanic to other ships navigating the icy waters of the Atlantic in the early morning of April 15, 1912.
"Come at once. We have struck a berg. It's a CQD, old man," the famed ocean liner's wireless operator, Jack Phillips, tapped in one of the first calls for help moments after the collision.
Soon, he added calls of SOS, a newly adopted distress signal that would ultimately come to replace CQD. Junior wireless operator Harold Bride had suggested using the new code, later telling the New York Times that he joked to Phillips that it "may be your last chance to send it."
The state-of-the-art wireless telegraph transmitter, installed by a technology company called Marconi, was the Titanic's sole connection to the rest of the world. And in the hours after the ship hit the iceberg, as frigid water flooded the lower decks and panicked passengers scrambled to the scarce lifeboats on board, the messages grew more frantic.
"We are putting passengers off in small boats," said one, according to a BBC account of the calls. "Women and children in boats. Cannot last much longer. Losing power." Then came the last words, just minutes before the "unsinkable" ship foundered: "Come quick. Engine room nearly full."