Marconi in East Kent

As Titanic sank, telegraph operators Bride and Phillips began to switch
between SOS and CQD, but could only send or receive one message at a time,
and their line was repeatedly tied up with the confusion of other operators.
Phillips went down with Titanic, sending distress signals into his last moments.
An enquiry undertaken by The US Senate concluded that wireless
communications at sea should be operational 24 hours a day, and called for
regulation of the American radio industry that ultimately restricted amateur
use of long-wave frequencies and included a provision through which the U.S.
adopted SOS as its standard distress call.
One little known fact but one shared by former Marconi employee Tim Wander
is that a total of 20 people who had tickets for The Titaic missed the ship’s
sailing from Southampton among them Guglielmo Marconi, his wife Beatrice
[nee O’Brien] and his three children who had been invited on board by Bruce
Ismay, Chairman of the White Star Line.
Seemingly a legal problem needed addressing and the family had sailed for
New York three days earlier on the Lusitania with Beatrice only cancelling her
ticket for the Titanic by telegram four hours before that ship sailed while
Marconi still had in his pocket a return ticket for a ship that never docked.
In September 1899, at the annual meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science (BAAS) held within the Connaught Hall in Dover, the
Marconi Company exhibited their radio equipment, which system was used to
transmit messages across the English Channel to the Mayor of Boulogne who
duly returned his Greetings.