New Signal

At 3 roy p.m. one afternoon last week, at latitude 22:10 North, longitude 51:28 West--1,900 miles east of Havana, Cuba, on the regular trade route from Barbados to England--the wireless operator of the British tanker El Ciervo began tapping out an alarm: SSS...SSS...SSS...

Long familiar to landlubbers has been the distress signal SOS. Contrary to landlubber tradition, S 0 S is not an abbreviation--either for "Save Our Souls" or "Save Our Ship." It is simply one of the clearest, simplest signals that could be devised from the Morse Code: Dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dot-dot-dot.

S S S--three triplets of dots--is a new signal, invented and used by the Allies since the beginning of World War II. It serves a double purpose: warns that the sending vessel may soon be in distress, calls up Allied war vessels for a possible kill. Landlubbers' translation: Stand by--Submarine Sighted. After she had given her alarm last week, El Ciervo did not see the potential enemy again.

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