A question for those more proficient in morse code. Poorly keyed code? What is meant by that?
The words and spellings are complete as are the numbers. The message doesn't make sense though, is that the poorly keyed code part? Charlie?
Poorly keyed code is just code where the dit's and dah's are the wrong length or are missing.
So a dot can become a dash, but more often a dash becomes a dot.
It's not hard to see how "don't" can become "can't".
Some of the words are probably wrong, like the word "beyond".
And "DON'T HOLD WITH US MUCH LONGER" is probably something similar just stating they can't hold on much longer or can't hold here much longer.
The fact that they state it is poorly keyed code tells us they are not 100 percent sure of what was heard.
Clearly the 281, the two NORTH's, HOWLAND, CALL, KHAQQ, MUCH LONGER, ABOVE WATER, and SHUT OFF are probably exactly what was sent. The rest were probably corrupted to some extent.
In addition the first "NORTH" probably did not immediately follow "281".
The few words we have were copied in a period of one whole hour - many parts of the message could actually have been sent many minutes apart, and I suspect we are also missing quite a bit of what was sent during that hour.
If I get some time I will look at it, but even having a couple minutes to visit the forum is difficult for me to find. I work very long hours...