The report mentions the ship making a C.Q.D. call, which I wasn't familiar with. The name comes from the earlier telegraph "CQ" call for alerts, named after th

The report mentions the ship making a C.Q.D. call, which I wasn't familiar with. The name comes from the earlier telegraph "CQ" call for alerts, named after the French word "sécurité", abbreviated as "sécu" which is how the letters C and Q are pronounced in French. "D" is added to indicate distress. Sending a CQD call means sending the letters C,Q,D in Morse code; this practice was later supplanted by SOS. Wikipedia has a page with more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CQD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CQD. It mentions the Titanic disaster: "Harold Bride, the junior radio operator, suggested using SOS, saying half-jokingly that it might be his last chance to use the new code."