While many may think the Ellsworth Amateur Wireless Association is named after the town of Ellsworth, the reality is that club is named after Charles B. Ellsworth (1892 – 1968). The club call sign, W1TU, was one of Charley’s call signs.
Charley Ellsworth is most well known for his role in relaying the distress signals from the RSM Titanic as it was sinking. In 1911 he began work for the Canadian Marconi Co. He was one of the operators at Cape Race, Newfoundland, April 14, 1912, when the distress signals came in from the Titanic. He handled the traffic, sending the message on to other stations. The Boston Globe and the Bangor Daily News have published lengthy accounts of Charley’s life and Titanic involvement. You can read the stories here.
There is, of course, more to his amateur radio story. This photo of Ellsworth was taken in the basement of the Hancock County Court House in Ellsworth, Maine. The following information is taken from his obituary. A link to the obituary is posted at the bottom of this page.
Charley Ellsworth was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1892. He attended schools in Gloucester and Portland, Maine, and college at St. Dunstans College on Prince Edward Island. After college he served 14 years in the U.S. Navy as a radio communications specialist. He spent part of that time at the Bar Harbor Naval Radio Station at Otter Cliffs, assigned to the base when it opened in 1917. While serving at the Bar Harbor station as the Chief Radioman, Ellsworth witness the first radio photography facsimile that was transmitted across the Atlantic, bearing the signature of General John Pershing.
After his time in the Navy Ellsworth piloted planes out of Roosevelt Field in New York and served as an agent for the Civil Aeronautics Board. During World War II he worked for the Federal Communications Commission as an intelligence radio operator along the east coast, based in Long Island, NY, and Atlantic City, NY. Following careers in the Navy and civil aviation, Ellsworth worked for 45 years for the Immigration Service. For some of the time he was a radio operator with U.S. Immigration Border Patrol at Rouses Point, NY.
At the time of his passing, Ellsworth and his wife had been working on a book chronicling his love of radio communication. He was laid to rest in Woodbine Cemetery in Ellsworth, Maine.
W1TU 