RMS Wray Castle was a training college for Merchant Navy radio officers based at

Wray Castle Wray Castle is a Victorian neo-gothic building at Claife in the English county of Cumbria. The house and grounds have belonged to the National Trust since 1929, and house has opened to the public on a regular basis since 2013. The grounds, whi ...

in the

Lake District The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or ''fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...

, from 1958 to 1998. At 11:40 p.m., on 14 April 1912 the hit an iceberg. The collision opened five of her watertight compartments to the sea; the ship gradually filled with water and by 2:20 a.m., she broke apart and foundered, with well over one thousand people still aboard. Two hours after ''Titanic'' foundered, the Cunard liner arrived and took aboard an estimated 705 survivors. There was worldwide shock at the huge loss of life and the procedural errors that had led to it. Public inquiries in Britain and the United States led to major improvements in maritime safety. One of their most important legacies was the establishment in 1914 of the

International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) is an international maritime treaty that sets minimum safety standards in the construction, equipment and operation of merchant ships. The International Maritime Organization ...

(SOLAS), which still governs maritime safety today. Additionally, several new wireless regulations were passed around the world in an effort to learn from the many missteps in wireless communications—which could have saved many more passengers. Primary to these improved regulations were the installation of radio equipment on ALL ships, fixed Distress frequencies and 24-hour watch on those frequencies. During the forty years that the college was in operation students studied the SOLAS Radio Procedures & Regulations, MRGC (Maritime Radiocommunications General Certificate including

Morse Code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...

), SCOTVEC (Maintenance of Radar Equipment), and the maintenance and repair of Maritime Radio and Radar equipment.

References

{{Reflist , refs = {{cite web, url=http://journals.law.stanford.edu/stanford-technology-law-review/online/itu-and-internets-titanic-moment , title=Patrick S. Ryan, The ITU and the Internet's Titanic Moment , format=PDF , date= , accessdate=2014-07-04

External links

International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea
Treaty in ECOLEX-the gateway to environmental law (English)
Facebook group for ex-students from Wray Castle College
1958 establishments in England 1998 disestablishments in England British Merchant Navy Lake District Westmorland