RMS Titanic headed for the French port of Cherbourg, a journey of . The weather was windy, very fine but cold and overcast. Because Cherbourg lacked docking facilities for a ship the size of "Titanic", tenders had to be used to transfer passengers from shore to ship. The White Star Line operated two at Cherbourg, the and the . Both had been designed specifically as tenders for the "Olympic"-class liners and were launched shortly after "Titanic". ("Nomadic" is today the only White Star Line ship still afloat.) Four hours after "Titanic" left Southampton, she arrived at Cherbourg and was met by the
CQ (call) the 1912 London International Radiotelegraph Convention, and is still used. A variant of the CQ call, "CQD", was the first code used as a distress signal. It was proposed by the Marconi Company and adopted in 1904, but was replaced between 1906 and 1908 by the SOS code. When the "Titanic" sank in 1912, it initially transmitted the distress call ""CQD DE MGY" (with ""MGY" being the ship's call sign). "Titanic"'s radio operator subsequently alternated between SOS and CQD calls afterwards. In amateur radio usage, a CQ call can be qualified by appending more letters, as in "CQ DX" (meaning