The Band That Played On (3 page)

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 about 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.