by Steve Turner
Shipwreck was an ever-present possibility in 1912. Radio communication was in its infancy, radar had not been invented, and safety measures were not highly evolved. Ships sinking in storms, or through collisions with rocks or other vessels, were commonplace events. That year Chambers’ Journal reported that 1,453 ships had been lost since 1841 and on the transatlantic route 24 steamers had been lost without trace. The fact that such attention was focused on the Titanic’s safety features—such as the watertight compartments sealed off by double-cylinder doors—was an indication that White Star saw value in allaying fears of vulnerability. As the New York Times reporter said of his experience on the Olympic, the thought that disaster could strike is something that heightens the senses. Everyone was conscious that transporting the luxuries of the French court or the English country home to the middle of the icy Atlantic was cheating nature and that nature could try to reclaim its supremacy.
Our knowledge of the band’s movements during the next four days can be assumed by what is known of the normal routine on transatlantic liners and supplemented by the few firsthand observations of passengers who survived. Although the musicians were to become eight of the most celebrated men to sail on the Titanic, they maintained a low profile. They were to be listened to, not watched, and were as anonymous to those they entertained as waiters were to those they served. If they played badly, it would be noted, but if they played well, it would be accepted as something that first-class passengers deserved.
The musicians were playing to a sophisticated audience, men and women who were used to buying the best of everything. There were, after all, a leading novelist, painter, journalist, actress, and Broadway producer on board. These socialites consumed culture in the same way they consumed champagne and caviar. Jean Hippach of Chicago, after noting that the band played three “programmes” each day—before luncheon, in the afternoon, and after dinner—went on to say: “They were all real musicians and were appreciated by the people on board who were the finest lot of people I ever crossed with—people of leisure and good breeding, all of them.” Jean Hippach was only sixteen at the time.
The quintet also played in the second-class saloon and may have played some lighter fare there. Mme Juliette Laroche wrote to her father after leaving Cherbourg: “I am writing you from the reading room [‘salon de lecture’] and there is a concert next to me: a violin, two cellos [and] a piano.” This is not only interesting in that it places the musicians in second class for a session, but also mentions them as a quartet. Since she was looking at the musicians as she wrote, it’s unlikely she was mistaken.
Another second-class passenger who recorded seeing the band was Kate Buss, a thirty-six-year-old English woman from Sittingbourne, Kent, on her way to meet her American fiancé in San Diego, California. She kept a journal in which she referred to some of the people she encountered by her own invented names. Dr. Ernest Moraweck, of Frankfort, Kentucky, became “Doctor Man”; an unidentified passenger became “Mr Sad Man”; and Wes Woodward became “Cello Man.”
On April 11, as the ship sailed away from Ireland, she had written: “We have three promenade decks, one above the other. Each one has a sort of hall lounge, and on the one above my cabin the band plays every afternoon and evening. The Cello Man is a favourite of mine. Every time he finishes a piece he looks at me and we smile.”
On April 12, she was again listening to the orchestra: “Saw Doctor just after dinner and reminded him of his promise to ask our Cello Man to play a solo. Says he would if I’d go to Kentucky. He waited for us and we took our seats on the stairs. Too late to arrange, so going to ask for it tomorrow. Cello Man quite nice. Very superior bandsman, and he always smiles his parting to us.”
The next day she persisted, arranging to meet the doctor and go together to listen to the orchestra. “I couldn’t get near to ask our Cello Man for a solo. Went up and had a walk with Doctor; then down on deck … After luncheon we went with a French lady to hear her sing. We had previously met the Cello Man and asked if he would play a solo. He is quite gentlemanly. He agreed and we chatted, amongst other things, about the Olympic. He was on her when the accident happened.”
Violet Jessop, the first-class stewardess who knew Woodward and Hume from the Olympic, claimed to have recalled the group’s final performance on the fateful night. “On that Sunday evening,” she wrote, “the music was at its gayest, led by young Jock, the first violin. When I ran into him during the interval he laughingly called out to me in his rich Scotch accent that he was about to give them ‘a real tune, a Scotch tune to finish up with.’ Always so eager and full of life was Jock.”
Some have questioned the accuracy of this memory and think she may have confused it with another night because of the mention of an interval and the implication that Hume was the bandleader. Could he have led the four-piece band in the second-class saloon that Juliette Laroche noticed? Could the interval have been some downtime between two performances in different areas of the ship? Her description of Hume’s personality seems spot on, as does her memory of his keenness to slip some Scottish music into the repertoire, but as the final piece of music on the night of April 14, it contradicts the memory of the Countess of Rothes that they played something by Offenbach.
Kate Buss didn’t identify the final tune but claimed in her diary that her friend “Mr N” (twenty-eight-year-old Robert Douglas Norman from Glasgow) had told her that it had been played at his request and that they had also played “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” “That night,” she wrote, “the pianist had asked me if I would mind taking round the subscription [collecting tips] as I had appreciated the music. At supper I talked Mr N and Doctor P into promising to do it for me and as a joke the former rehearsed a possible speech, and then said: ‘Meet me on the upper deck at six in the morning. I will talk it over.’ I saw the pianist as I was going to bed, and promised. That was the last I saw of them.”
Colonel Archibald Gracie mentioned the musicians in passing when describing his after-dinner socializing on the night of April 14 with “playboy” James Clinch Smith and architect Edward Kent. “According to usual custom we adjourned to the Palm Room, with many others, for the usual coffee at individual tables where we listened to the always delightful music of the Titanic’s band. On these occasions, full dress was always en règle; and it was a subject both of observation and admiration, that there were so many beautiful women—then especially in evidence—aboard the ship.”
Earlier that day Gracie had been at the church service in the dining room. Although he didn’t mention the band, it would have been one of their duties to provide music for the hymns. He particularly remembered singing “Oh God Our Help in Ages Past” both because of the poignancy of the words in retrospect and the fact that the next time he sang it was at a memorial service for his friend, Clinch, for whom the hymn was a favorite.
O God our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast
And our eternal home.
One of Gracie’s ship companions was Helen Churchill Candee, a spirited American who was to become a role model for later generations of feminists. Divorced from an abusive husband, she’d developed her own career as a novelist, journalist, and interior designer, going on to become a traveler and explorer as well. In 1900 she had written an influential book How Women May Earn a Living and had served as a consultant when the West Wing of President Roosevelt’s White House was remodeled in 1906. She had been traveling in Europe to research The Tapestry Book when she was given the news that her son had been badly injured in a car crash in America. For her the Titanic was the fastest and most convenient way of getting to his bedside.
Her impressions of life on the Titanic were published on May 4, 1912, in Collier’s Weekly and were among the most evocative descriptions of life in first class with its indiscretions, love of luxury, and mild flirtations. She described the same dinner and after-dinner drinks referred to by Gracie, but with a designer’s
eye for detail, a novelist’s sense of atmosphere, and a journalist’s ear for conversation. She also took more note of the band than most.
“At dinner, two hours later, the scene might have been in London, or New York, with the men in evening jackets, the women shining in pale satins and clinging gauze,” she wrote.
The prettiest girl even wore a glittering frock of dancing length, with silver fringe around her dainty satin feet. And after dinner there was coffee served to all at little tables around the great general lounging place, for here the orchestra played.
Some said it was poor on its Wagner work, others said the violin was weak. But that was for conversation’s sake, for nothing on board was more popular than the orchestra. You could see that by the way everyone refused to leave it. And everyone asked of it some favourite hit. The prettiest girl asked for dance music, and clocked her satin heels and swayed her adolescent arms to the rhythm. He of the Two who had walked the deck [her reference to the British businessman Hugh Woolner] asked for Dvorak, while she asked for Puccini, and both got their liking, for the orchestra was adroit and willing.
The Puccini was probably from Madame Butterfly, the Dvorak could have been “Humoresque,” a piece in the White Star music book. Mahala Douglas specifically remembered Puccini and Tchaikovsky being played. Lucy Noel Martha, Countess of Rothes, remembered that the last piece they had played that night was from Jacques Offenbach’s 1881 opera The Tales of Hoffman. This was possibly “The Barcarolle.” When she heard it being played in a restaurant in the spring of 1913, she felt “a cold and intense horror” but didn’t immediately know why. Then she remembered the last time she’d heard it.
Although we know the type of music the band played and what may have been in the White Star music book, there are very few tunes that we can be absolutely certain the band played. Chief Steward Edward Wheeler said the pieces were “selections from the opera and the latest popular melodies from England and America.” Amelie Icard recalled Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” based on a melody by J. S. Bach, and something from Lehár’s operetta La Veuve Joyeuse being played after lunch. Others mentioned ragtime, waltzes, fox-trots, show songs, and, as already mentioned, classical. There has been speculation that they played “Oh, You Beautiful Doll” and “Pleasant Memories,” but these claims aren’t sourced.
Although recordings were available in 1912, they hadn’t become the primary vehicle for making a hit song. Sheet music still ruled and power resided with songwriters and their publishers. The new wonder child of songwriting was twenty-two-year-old Irving Berlin, whose breakthrough song in 1911 was “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” By the end of that year he’d had more than a dozen hits including, “Everybody’s Doing It Now,” “I Want to Be in Dixie,” “You’ve Got Me Hypnotized,” and “When You Kiss an Italian Girl.”
Ragtime, popularized by Scott Joplin more than a decade before, would go on to start a dance craze that would make some observers think America was having a collective breakdown. Berlin’s songs, with their simple catchy melodies and straightforward conversational lyrics, were indications of a new, more relaxed era. Said Berlin: “My ambition is to reach the heart of the average American, not the highbrow nor the lowbrow, but that vast intermediate crew which is the real soul of the country. The highbrow is likely to be superficial, over trained, and supersensitive. The lowbrow is warped, subnormal. My public is the real people.”
In 1912 ragtime was as controversial as rock and roll would become in 1957. The syncopated beat was initially disturbing and commentators were divided as to whether it was merely a reflection of the increased pace of life or whether the music itself made people behave more frenetically. “A man playing ragtime can’t keep still,” said the conductor of New York’s Trocadero Orchestra. “The music grips player and audience alike and sets everybody on the jump.” An English music publisher explained: “We live in an age of rush. Ragtime music suits the period. The old song or smoking concert, with its slow, gentle boys’ chorus, is finished. Life is too short for it … The whole busy world is now humming to the new music which rushes just as fast as modern, hustling life.” The Music Trade Review thought ragtime might simply be a protest against monotony. Something different yet crude is often preferable to something familiar yet perfect. “This rage for change is a law of life, and is illustrated in architecture and literature as well as in music. It is illustrated even in the fashions governing dress.”
Whatever the band played, it agreed with Helen Churchill Candee. It was music to relax to, music to oil the flow of conversation. One of her group told stories, one of them told jokes, and the normally restrained ones began to lose their inhibitions. “The lady felt divinely flattered to be in such company,” she remarked of herself. The music stopped at eleven. “Folk drifted off to their big cabins, with happy ‘see-you-in-the-mornings,’ until a group formed itself alone, and the only sounds the musicians made were those of instruments being shut in their velvet beds.”
11
“A SOLEMNITY
TOO DEEP FOR WORDS.”
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. The musicians would have been in their cabins probably having a smoke before retiring. They would have felt the collision more sharply than those higher up because E Deck on the starboard side was close to the point of impact. Lawrence Beesley, above on D Deck, only sensed an increased vibration: “Nothing more than that. No sound of a crash or anything else. No sense of shock, no jar that felt like one heavy body meeting another.” Lady Duff-Gordon’s maid, Laura Francatelli, who was on E Deck, felt a distinct shudder and when she left her cabin twenty minutes later noticed that the corridors were flooding. E Deck was already below the waterline.
Ice fields were an ever-present threat to transatlantic ships at this time of year and after only two days at sea the Titanic had begun to receive warnings from eastbound ships. On April 14 alone, it had heard from the Caronia, Noordam, Baltic, Amerika, Californian, and Mesaba. One message wasn’t passed to the bridge, one was passed on but ended up in J. Bruce Ismay’s pocket, and yet another was ignored as the Titanic’s wireless operators struggled with the volume of messages needing to be sent on behalf of passengers. When the iceberg that would do the damage was first spotted, it was only around five hundred yards away. The engines were consequently cut and the ship turned toward port by the helmsman, but there wasn’t enough time to sufficiently navigate so large a vessel and therefore, although the bow avoided the ice, the starboard side rubbed along it in what at the time seemed like a glancing blow.
Passengers out on the open decks initially thought the worst that could have taken place was damage to the paintwork. Ice fragments from the towering block had tumbled onto the decks and some people were picking them up in handfuls and starting snowball fights. But, in fact, the damage had been more wounding than if the ship had rammed the berg head on, crumpled the bow, and been spun around. Projections from the wall of ice had acted like tin openers, slicing into the steel plates and allowing water to seep into the much-vaunted bulkhead compartments. These had been designed on the premise that only one or two of the compartments were ever likely to be penetrated. If more than two were allowed to flood, of course, the weight of water taken on would eventually drag the ship down.
According to passenger Laura Francatelli, the potential gravity of the situation was recognised earlier on E Deck than on the upper decks where men continued to drink, read books in the library, and play cards. Shortly after the impact she was informed that the ship had hit an iceberg but was told that it was nothing to worry about. By 12:05 the situation was tangibly worse, as she described in a letter to a friend: “Then the water was on my deck, coming along the corridor and I found all the people, running up and down the stairs. Oh Marion, that was a sickening moment. I felt myself go like marble.”
There is only one account of the musicians making their way to their position. It comes from stewardess Violet Je
ssop, who knew Woodward and Hume from their time on the Olympic. She was in her bunk on either E or F Deck and heard a “low, rending, crunching, ripping sound” on impact but didn’t leave her cabin until the call to lifeboats came. On the way up the stairs she passed Captain Smith, J. Bruce Ismay, Chief Purser Herbert McElroy, and the ship’s surgeon, Dr. O’Laughlin, none of whom seemed overly concerned. She wrote that as she turned at the top of the staircase, “I ran into Jock, the bandleader and his crowd with their instruments. ‘Funny, they must be going to play,’ thought I, and at this late hour! Jock smiled in passing, looking rather pale for him, remarking, ‘Just going to give them a tune to cheer things up a bit,’ and passed on.”
By 12:15 a.m. the musicians had set up on the Promenade Deck and played for around twenty-five minutes in the entrance as the passengers awaited instructions. Jack Thayer, only seventeen at the time, recalled them playing there as crowds milled around. Then they moved upstairs to the Boat Deck level of the grand staircase, where there was a piano, before eventually moving out onto the Boat Deck itself. This fits with Lawrence Beesley’s account of seeing a cellist walking down the deck at 12:40 a.m. “Soon after the men had left the starboard side, I saw a bandsman—the ‘cellist—come round the vestibule corner from the staircase entrance and run down the now deserted starboard deck, his ‘cello trailing behind him, the spike dragging along the floor.” This was probably Woodward.
According to an unidentified third-class steward, who spoke to the Western Daily Mercury: “As the musicians ran after their instruments they were laughed at by several members of the crew who did not realize how serious matters were.” According to a separate account in the Sphere, this was because they thought the band members were anxious to save their instruments. The crew didn’t realize they were about to play.
What has never been absolutely certain is how many of the eight musicians were involved in this exercise, as they’d previously worked as two separate groups with different repertoires. If they combined, what did the two pianists, Percy Taylor and Theo Brailey, play after they were out on the Boat Deck itself? It seems unlikely that they would have hauled a piano onto the deck of a sinking ship. Others have questioned the ability of the cellists to remain in place once the ship listed beyond a certain degree because cellists need to be firmly seated. The survivors mostly referred to “the band” or “the ship’s orchestra” without enumerating them.