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Excuse me Mac G, but if you can produce for me a rule or regulation in 1912 saying that Phillips violated his duties by not sending those two messages to the bridge, then I might believe you.
The marconi service was for the paying passengers first in 1912, it was not employed by the White Star Line. Messages regarding navigation were seen as a secondary matter in many ways.
Now, with that said, messages comming into the marconi station can be marked as an "urgent message for the commander" at the beginning of the submission, which Mesaba and Californian messages were not. The messages on the contrary were just warnings - "hey, we saw ice here", "hey, we have stopped for the night". They did not imply urgency. We can say now that if would have been nice for Smith to have seen the last two messages but that is about it. Can you blame Phillips or Bride for something that was a secondary responsibility to their job? When they were backed up with personal messages?
And believe me, it was not as if Smith did not see a single other ice warning which implied that sometime before midnight on the 14th, Titanic might encounter ice.
I totally agree with you in that the engineers are some of the greatest heros. But the fact of the matter is, if Jack was not at that key tapping out CQD MGY, those engineers who died would have really died for nothing because nobody would have been saved!