The Band That Played On Read online

  On the night of April 18, presumably unaware that the Carpathia was ahead of schedule, Marconi was at a party. Van Anda sent a messenger to fetch him down to Pier 54 to board the ship with Sammis and New York Times reporter Jim Speers. It was now around 11:30 and almost all the passengers had already disembarked. The copy would have to be ready for the printer within an hour if it was to make the first edition on April 19.

  When they got to the pier, police stopped them. The reporter, Speers, protested: “Sir, we are Mr. Marconi, his manager, and a New York Times reporter.” The officer pushed the Marconi engineer Sammis back, believing him to be the journalist in question, saying, “Mr. Marconi and his manager may pass through. The reporter can’t.” Speers and Marconi boarded, while Sammis had to remain behind the police line. The two men made their way to the wireless room where they found Bride still tapping out messages left for him by passengers. “That’s hardly worth sending now, boy,” said Marconi. Bride, his frostbitten feet still bandaged, looked up slowly and then recognized his distinguished employer.

  Bride’s story, which he poured out to Speers in a rambling monologue, was everything Van Anda had hoped it would be. He’d got out of bed on the night of April 14 to relieve the senior operator, Jack Phillips, only to find that the Titanic had been in a collision. He watched as Phillips calmly made contact with the Carpathia and the Olympic and saw Captain Smith’s dawning realization that the ship was beyond salvation.

  In a sensational comment, he revealed that a stoker (one of the men who stoked the ship’s furnaces with coal) had come into the Titanic’s wireless room to steal Phillips’s life jacket. Bride attacked him. “I did my duty,” he said. “I hope I finished him. I don’t know. We left him on the cabin floor of the wireless room and he was not moving.” It was never clear from this or subsequent interviews whether Bride was claiming to have killed him or merely to have knocked him unconscious and left him to drown.

  Phillips died of exposure while in the water. Bride found the last remaining collapsible boat, but when it was pushed overboard, it landed upside down with him underneath it. Bride managed to swim away as sparks poured from one of the Titanic’s funnels, and the ship finally disappeared from view. After some time in the water, he was given space on his original boat, which had since been righted.

  Bride gave a detailed account of how the ship’s band had carried on playing throughout the sinking. The matter-of-fact way he told the story gave it added poignancy: “From aft came the tunes of the band,” he said. “It was a ragtime tune, I don’t know what. Then there was ‘Autumn.’ Phillips ran aft and that was the last I ever saw of him alive.”

  His description of the ship’s final moments suggested that the musicians didn’t even attempt to escape in a lifeboat. “The ship was gradually turning on her nose—just like a duck does that goes down for a dive. I had only one thing on my mind—to get away from the suction. The band was still playing. I guess all of the band went down. They were playing ‘Autumn’ then. I swam with all my might. I suppose I was 150 feet away when the Titanic, on her nose, with her after quarter sticking straight up into the air, began to settle—slowly.”

  Bride ended by saying that two things about the sinking stood out in his mind above all others. One was that Jack Phillips had continued to send messages even after Captain Smith told him he was free to leave his position and look after his own life. The other was the band that played on. “The way the band kept playing was a noble thing … How they ever did it I cannot imagine.”

  The twenty-five-hundred-word first-person account appeared in the next day’s New York Times along with fifty-two other stories about the ship. The headline was “Thrilling story by Titanic’s wireless man.” The subheadings were “Bride tells how he and Phillips worked and how he finished a stoker who tried to steal Phillips’s life belt—Ship sank to tune of ‘Autumn.’ ” The image of the lighted ship sliding under the waves (“She was a beautiful sight then”), while the band carried on regardless, captured the public’s imagination.

  Getting to talk to Bride was a journalistic scoop and one that would be associated with Van Anda for the rest of his life. But there was another journalist who’d been one step ahead. Unbeknown to the New York Times, Carlos F. Hurd, a thirty-six-year-old reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, owned by Ralph Pulitzer, had been with his wife, Katherine, on the Carpathia as a paying passenger headed for the Mediterranean when it had diverted to pick up the Titanic survivors.

  Hurd found himself in the sad but privileged position of being a writer surrounded by eyewitnesses of one of the biggest peacetime tragedies in living memory and having plenty of time to amass an oral record. He began to speak to those who’d been rescued and found that there was no need to coax information from them. Happy to have been saved, they “found a certain relief in speech.” He took notes and employed Katherine as his assistant. The Carpathia’s crew members, who’d been instructed by Captain Rostron to keep him away from the Titanic passengers, impeded his job. The crew refused him supplies of paper, banned him from contacting America by wireless, and had his cabin routinely searched for notes and transcripts. He was forced to write on anything available, including toilet paper, and to keep his material with him at all times.

  Messages sent to him care of the ship’s wireless room were not passed on, so he was out of contact with his editors. Despite that, he knew the New York staff would find a way to get to the Carpathia so that he could pass on to them this huge story. One of the telegrams that didn’t reach him was sent on April 18 by Ralph Pulitzer: “Chapin is on tug Dazelline. Will meet Carpathia between New York and Fire Island Thursday. Been [sic] on lookout and deliver to Chapman [sic] tug your full report of wreck with all interviews obtainable.” Charles Chapin was the editor of the Pulitzer-owned New York Evening World and Hurd had already anticipated what Chapin would want and had packaged his manuscript in a white waterproof bag, attached it to a cigar box, and added champagne corks on lengths of string, ready to toss it overboard. It was an unusual way of delivering copy, but these were unusual times.

  Captain Rostron of the Carpathia tried to deceive the flotilla of tugboats that he knew was awaiting his arrival in New York waters by radioing false positions, but the Dazelline, which could equal the Carpathia’s speed of fourteen knots, didn’t fall for the trick. It managed to locate the ship and draw up close to it while a reporter bellowed Hurd’s name through a megaphone. Spotting Pulitzer’s flag, Hurd tossed the package toward the tug but, unfortunately, one of his corked strings tangled with a rope from a Titanic lifeboat, which had not yet been released and was still in the spot it had been hoisted to during the rescue. “A sailor reached out, took the bundle, and hesitated,” Hurd later wrote. “‘Throw it!’ cried a dozen persons. The sailor tossed the bundle to Chapin. With an acknowledging toot of the tug’s whistle, the little craft churned off.”

  The drama didn’t end there. The tugboat ploughed its way toward an empty dock at the end of 12th Street, but after disembarking, the World employees found their exit blocked by a boarded-up warehouse with no electric lighting. They had to smash their way into the darkened building and out on the other side to make it to the street. An elevated train took them to the stop closest to the New York World building at 53–63 Park Row. During the journey Chapin hurriedly marked up Hurd’s lengthy handwritten copy and added instructions to the typesetters. A reporter named “Gen” Whytock met him at the station and sprinted the half mile to the office with the script. By the time the Carpathia docked, an Extra edition of the Evening World was already on the street with a condensed version of the five-thousand-word story on the front page beneath the headline “Titanic Boilers Blew Up, Breaking Her in Two after Striking Berg.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch also managed to run this story in an Extra that night, putting the full story on the cover the next day.

  Headline from the April 18th evening edition of the New York World.

  Thus it was Hurd’s story that first informed the world a
bout the band playing on. In the Evening World he wrote: “The ship’s string band gathered in the saloon, near the end, and played ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’” The fuller version published in the next day’s papers, and later syndicated by the Associated Press, read: “As the screams in the water multiplied, another sound was heard, strong and clear at first, then fainter in the distance. It was the melody of the hymn ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ played by the string orchestra in the dining saloon. Some of those on the water started to sing the words, but grew silent as they realized that for the men who played, the music was a sacrament soon to be consummated by death. The serene strains of the hymn and the frantic cries of the dying blended in a symphony of sorrow.”

  The Leeds Mercury, which would have been read by bandleader Wallace Hartley’s bereaved fiancée, Maria Robinson, contained a quote from Carlos Hurd in its April 20 edition. “To relate that as the last boats moved away the ship’s string band gathered in the saloon and played ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ sounds like an attempt to give added colour to a scene which was in itself the climax of solemnity, but various passengers and survivors of the crew agree in declaring they heard this music.”

  Other accounts that confirmed Hurd’s report swiftly followed. Caroline Bonnell from Youngstown, Ohio, who’d been traveling with two aunts, an uncle, and a cousin, told a reporter from the United Press Agency that those closest to the ship when it sank heard the men singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” This story appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on April 19 and was picked up by other newspapers.

  By the twentieth of April, the story was widely accepted and was viewed as one of the most heartening acts of bravery in the whole tragedy. Southampton resident Ada Clarke was pushed onto a lifeboat by her husband, who chose to remain behind. “I shouldn’t have done it otherwise,” she told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Oh, they were brave and splendid, all the men. They died like brave men. At the last, all the men were kneeling and there floated out across the water the strains of ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’ I could hear it and saw the band men kneeling too.” Mrs. Caroline Brown of Belmont, Massachusetts, told the Worcester Evening Gazette: “The band played marching from deck to deck, and as the ship went under I could still hear the music. The musicians were up to their knees in water the last I saw them.”

  Under a headline of “Band Goes Down Playing,” London’s Daily Mirror reported: “In the whole history of the sea, there is little equal to the wonderful behaviour of these humble players. In the last moments of the great ship’s doom, when all was plainly lost, when braver and hardier men might almost have been excused for doing practically anything to save themselves, they stood responsive to their conductor’s baton and played a recessional tune.” In one edition the front page was given over entirely to the words and music of the hymn.

  London’s Daily Mirror front page featuring the words of the hymn, April 20, 1912.

  On April 21 the New York Times devoted a story to the musicians that favored the tune “Autumn” that Bride had mentioned in his interview as the band’s swan song. They had taken him to mean a tune of that name used by Anglicans in England and Episcopalians in America, not taking into account the fact that a young wireless operator would be more likely to identify hymns by their first lines than by the name of their tunes. According to a correspondent to the New York Times on May 12, “Autumn” was not wedded to a particular hymn and listed seven hymns regularly set to “Autumn” in America: “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” “Saviour Breathe an Evening Blessing,” “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken,” “Hail, Thou Once-Despised Jesus,” “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” and “In the Cross of Christ I Glory.” In addition, the tune “Autumn” was also known in some hymnals as “Madrid” and in others as “Jaynes or Janes.”

  Carlos Hurd himself later became less certain that the musicians had taken their last breaths playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” He didn’t question that the band had carried on playing and that they had played a hymn or hymns, but he couldn’t be 100 percent sure that his sources could be trusted to accurately identify a tune, given their distance from the ship, the extraneous noises, and the dreamlike way that events seemed to unfold.

  Twenty years after the sinking he wrote:

  The endeavour to fit such a story together showed how fragmentary was the knowledge of individuals. One would mention an incident which could be confirmed or completed only by another. In the search for the other, new suggestions and new complications would arise. The job would have taxed the energy and resources of a dozen reporters.

  An instance of this difficulty was the incident, still remembered, of the playing of the hymn music by the English musicians in the sinking ship’s orchestra. Several persons told of having heard this music from their boats, but, because of distracting noises, they could not be sure what the melody was. Two women, who professed familiarity with sacred music, said it was “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” This statement appeared in my report and gained general currency. The New York Times later obtained a book of music said to be a duplicate of the one which the Titanic’s orchestra had. It did not contain the tune Bethany, to which the hymn already named is sung, but it did contain the hymn tune Autumn, which, though in a different meter, is much like Bethany. The Times concluded that Autumn was the number played.

  Although minor details differed in the accounts of survivors—the band marched or knelt, played “Autumn” or “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” carried on to the bitter end or calmly packed their instruments away before the final plunge—there was an overwhelming consistency. The musicians had played on the deck as the ship went down. They had forfeited their lives for the sake of others. They had played the tunes of hymns to induce a spirit of peace and calm. They were heroic. Admiral Lord Fisher of England referred to them as “that glorious band,” and the phrase caught on.

  The story of their gallantry came to epitomize a spirit of courage, duty, and self-sacrifice. It was held up as proof that manhood wasn’t withering away through self-indulgence, frivolity, and lack of religion. Although the disaster itself was widely regarded as a comeuppance for the powerful and wealthy who had become fixated on speed, luxury, and the domination of nature, the behavior of the musicians showed that worthy “old-fashioned” values of chivalry, fortitude, and love of neighbor still persisted.

  The names of the musicians began to appear in newspapers and magazines, although little was known about them. The Daily Mirror contacted Charles Black, the Liverpool agent who had booked the band for the Titanic, to find out more. He explained that there were, in fact, two bands—a “saloon orchestra” of five men, and a “deck band” of three. “Probably they all massed together under their leader, Mr. Wallace Hartley, as the ship sank,” he suggested. “Five of the eight, Mr. Hartley, P. C. Taylor, J. W. Woodward, F. Clark and W. T. Brailey were Englishmen. One, J. Hume, was a Scotsman and the remaining two, Bricoux and Krins, were French and German respectively.”

  Neither the quintet nor the trio had played together before boarding the Titanic, three of the musicians had never before been to sea, and, not surprisingly, there was no group photograph to illustrate the stories describing their heroism. Their names were often misspelled or wrongly reported. In the New York Times the cellist John Wesley Woodward became George Woodward, the pianist Percy Cornelius Taylor became Herbert Taylor, violinist Georges Krins became George Krius, bandleader Wallace Hartley became Wallace Hattry, and cellist Roger Bricoux became Roger Brelcoux. (On one memorial he was permanently inscribed as Roger Bricouk.) Even agent Charles Black was confused about the nationality of Georges Krins. He thought Krins was German, not Belgian.

  Almost two weeks after the sinking, the Illustrated London News produced a full-page memorial poster with oval portraits of all the musicians except Bricoux, whose family hadn’t been able to supply a picture in time. A series of six postcards by Holmfirth, Bamforth & Co., featuring images of the Titanic, grieving women,
and the words of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” was published. In France fifty thousand copies of the sheet music to “Plus Pres de Toi Mon Dieu” were sold in a matter of weeks. In America musician Harold Jones and lyricist Mark Beam wrote a song titled “The Band Played ‘Nearer, My God, Thee’ as the Ship Went Down.”

  There the brave men stood,

  Las true heroes should,

  With their hearts in faith sublime,

  And their names shall be fond memory

  Until the end of Time.

  And the band was bravely playing

  The song of cross and crown

  —“Nearer, My God, to Thee”

  As the ship went down.

  On May 18 bandleader Wallace Hartley’s body was brought back to his Lancashire birthplace of Colne to be buried in the family vault alongside his two brothers who had died in infancy. The funeral was an event of epic proportions with crowds of thirty to forty thousand thronging the streets; photographs of the procession and burial were published around the world. Just as the band had given the victims of the sinking a human face, so Hartley gave a face to the band. He was the only one of the eight whose remains would return home.

  His parents were inundated with letters from members of the public who claimed to share their grief. A typical letter read: “I desire to congratulate you sincerely on being the mother of a hero and a gentleman whose name—many years after yours and mine are forgotten—will bring a thrill of pride wherever Englishmen are gathered. The knowledge that your dear son died at his post giving comfort and consolation to hundreds of others must ever be a comforting and consoling memory to you.” Others wanted souvenirs of a man they had never met—photographs, samples of his handwriting, copies of music he had touched, something he had owned.