Steve Turner
Steve Turner is a music journalist, biographer and poet, who grew up in Northamptonshire, England.
“They were brave and splendid, all the men. They died like brave men.”
They kept it up until the very end. Only the engulfing ocean had power to drown them into silence.
Wallace Hartley: “I’ve always felt that, when men are called to face death suddenly, music is are more effective in cheering them on than all the firearms in creation.”
The arrival of Wallace Hartley’s body became a focal point of national grief. This young man not only represented all who had died on the Titanic, but also the values that the British feared were in decline.
“The notes of this music were the last thing I heard before I went off the poop and felt myself going headlong into the icy water with the engines and machinery buzzing in my ears.”
“The ship’s orchestra of eight young men were standing knee deep in water playing.”
“No praise could be sufficient for those courageous musicians whom we left behind. They were heroes to a man.”
Shipwreck was an ever-present possibility in 1912.
The final dive of the ship, as the bow lay submerged and the stern rose out of the water, was truly horrendous for all who witnessed it.
This object of great beauty—even in its stricken condition—went down with a terrifying roar…a sound that survivors later described as the most bloodcurdling they had ever heard.
When everything on the ship was being turned upside down, the music remained the same. In the midst of mind-jarring abnormality, it was the one thing that retained its familiarity.
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.
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.
“I shall never forget the sight of that beautiful boat as she went down, the orchestra playing to the last, the lights burning until they were extinguished by the waves. It sounds so unreal, like a scene on the stage.”
It wasn’t hard for people to see the Titanic as a metaphor for Western civilization’s obsessions with speed, wealth, and conquest at the expense of contemplation, sharing and the well-being of one’s neighbor.
It was 11:45 at night according to ship’s time when the Titanic grazed along the iceberg that would send it to the ocean bed.
Not only had they behaved dutifully and without apparent concern for their own safety, but they also offered the hope that not all of the younger male generation were venial, lazy, proud, irreligious, inconsiderate, self-indulgent, weak-willed, and timorous.
The story of their gallantry came to epitomize a spirit of courage, duty and self-sacrifice.
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.
There is not in history a more splendid and inspiring example of self-control, of self-sacrifice, of courage and of manliness.