The Night Lives On

by Walter Lord

  Daly ended up among the survivors who reached one of the collapsibles that floated off the ship; so he was at least in a position to see. Still, it was only one letter. To be taken seriously, it needed some sort of confirmation.

  That came in 1981 with the publishing of The Titanic, the Psychic and the Sea by Rustie Brown. In the course of her research, Mrs. Brown ran across an unpublished letter from First Class passenger George Rheims to his wife in France. It is dated April 19, 1912, the day after the Carpathia reached New York with the Titanic’s survivors. Rheims was one of the few who jumped near the end and ultimately reached Collapsible A; he, too, was in a position to see. Originally written in French, here is a translation of the pertinent part of his letter

  While the last boat was leaving, I saw an officer with a revolver fire a shot and kill a man who was trying to climb into it. As there remained nothing more for him to do, the officer told us, “Gentlemen, each man for himself, Good-bye.” He gave a military salute and then fired a bullet into his head. That’s what I call a man!!!

  These strikingly similar accounts come from completely independent sources. There’s no reason to suppose that Eugene Daly and George Rheims were ever in touch. Both were writing a private letter to an intimate member of the family, not an account for the press. Both were writing immediately after the event, not years later when fantasy might have taken over. They had absolutely no reason to fabricate, but every reason to be telling the truth as far as they saw it.

  Supposing such an incident really happened, what boat was involved? The guiding clue is in Daly’s letter, where he writes that he had no chance to see the officer’s suicide because “I was up to my knees in the water at the time.” This means that by now the bridge must have dipped under, and the sea was swirling along the Boat Deck. All the boats had been launched except Collapsibles A and B, which had been dropped down to the Boat Deck from the roof of the officers’ quarters. On the port side, Collapsible B landed upside down and could only be floated off as a raft. Only Collapsible A on the starboard side could still be launched properly, and members of the crew were desperately trying to hook it up to the davits when the sea came rolling along the deck. One of these men was Steward Edward Brown, whose testimony is our best source on Collapsible A. His account fits well with Daly’s letter—he even describes the water washing around his legs. He does not mention any shooting, but concedes there was a great “scramble” to get into the boat. All in all, it seems most likely that Daly was writing about Collapsible A.

  Who was the officer involved? Could it have been Purser McElroy? Jack Thayer recalled McElroy firing two shots to stop a rush on one of the forward starboard boats, but Thayer did not think it was the last boat. Apart from that, the officers of the Victualling Department were basically “housekeepers.” They were not likely to be in charge of loading and lowering lifeboats, nor would they have the authority to declare “Each man for himself,” as Rheims noted. Lightoller in his memoirs recalled saying good-bye to the pursers and doctors, who were standing off to one side of the Boat Deck. He specifically praised their quiet courage for staying out of the way while the deck force launched the last boats.

  A far more likely candidate would be one of the three lost officers of the Deck Department. Sixth Officer Moody was on the scene; he was in charge of the party on the roof of the officers’ quarters that cut Collapsible A free. On the other hand, once back on the Boat Deck, he would have come under First Officer Murdoch, who was trying to attach the collapsible to the falls. He then wouldn’t have had the authority to give the order “Each man for himself.”

  First Officer Murdoch was in exactly the right spot, working on the collapsible. Moreover, he had been in charge of the bridge at the time of the crash and had given the orders that failed to save the ship. If his thoughts turned to suicide, it was at least understandable. Yet Lightoller and those who knew Murdoch felt he was the last person to take his own life. When last seen, just as Lightoller dove into the sea, Murdoch was still working on the falls.

  That leaves Chief Officer Wilde, who is the enigma of the night. None of the survivors had much to say about him. He was new to the ship, and Lightoller’s feathers were clearly ruffled at being bumped down a notch to make room for Wilde as “Chief.” But silence and our lack of knowledge are not evidence; so in the end there’s no more reason to suppose Wilde was the officer seen by Daly and Rheims than anyone else.

  The whole incident can’t be verified, yet can’t be dismissed. It was not just one more lurid tale appearing in the yellow press; it was witnessed and independently described by two separate firsthand sources. It must be taken seriously, but beyond that, it remains a mystery.

  CHAPTER XI

  The Sound of Music

  THE LAST MOMENTS OF the Titanic are full of mysteries—none more intriguing than those surrounding the ship’s band. We know they played, but little else. Where they played, how long they played, and what they played remain matters for speculation.

  All eight musicians were lost; so there are no firsthand accounts. We can only piece the story together from bits of evidence. The search is made more difficult by a host of legends that have cropped up, and by the fact that few of the Titanic’s survivors seem to have been blessed with a very good musical ear.

  The whole problem is further complicated by the fact that there were two distinct musical units on the Titanic, not just a single eight-piece orchestra, as is generally assumed. First, there was a quintet led by violinist Wallace Hartley and used for routine ship’s business—tea-time and after-dinner concerts, Sunday service and the like. There was no brass or drums. Vernon and Irene Castle had introduced the foxtrot, but it hadn’t reached the White Star Line yet.

  In addition to this basic orchestra, the Titanic had something very special: a trio of violin, cello, and piano that played exclusively in the Reception Room outside the À la Carte Restaurant and Café Parisien. This was all part of White Star’s effort to plant a little corner of Paris in the heart of a great British liner, and appropriately the trio included a French cellist and a Belgian violinist to add to the Continental flavoring.

  These two orchestras had completely separate musical libraries. They had their own arrangements, and they did not normally mix. It is likely (but not certain) that on the night of the collision they played together for the first time. Hence whatever they played had to be relatively simple and easy to handle without sheet music— the current hits and old numbers that the men knew by heart.

  Where did they play? Apparently they initially took their stand in the First Class lounge on A Deck around 12:15 A.M. Dressed in their regular uniforms with the green facings, they looked as though it was a perfectly normal occasion. Jack Thayer remembered them playing to a restless crowd milling in and out of the room, not paying much attention.

  Later, the band moved up to the Boat Deck level of the grand staircase. Here they were in the mainstream of the passengers heading from their staterooms to the boats. There was a small piano on the port side of the foyer, and it was put to good use.

  Near the end, they moved out onto the Boat Deck itself, but still remained near the entrance to the grand staircase. By now the interior of the ship was nearly deserted and if their music was to do any good, they had to be where people could hear them.

  How long did they play? Legend has them carrying on with the water practically up to their knees, but by then the slant of the deck would have been so steep, no one could have stood. At the other extreme, Colonel Gracie, on board to the last, said that the band stopped playing about half an hour before the ship sank. He added that he himself saw the musicians lay down their instruments. Curiously, Gracie did not mention this in his authoritative study The Truth about the Titanic, but he went into some detail in a talk he gave at the University Club in Washington on November 23, 1912. This was less than two weeks before he died; so it is presumably his last word on the subject.

  Gracie’s recollection seems confirmed by First Clas
s passenger A. H. Barkworth, also there to the end, who recalled: “I do not wish to detract from the bravery of anybody, but I might mention that when I first came on deck the band was playing a waltz. The next time I passed where the band had been stationed, the members had thrown down their instruments, and were not to be seen.”

  Barkworth was a stolid Yorkshireman, not given to fantasy. He and Gracie undoubtedly told what they saw, but nothing varies more wildly than estimates of time the night the Titanic went down. Other witnesses, equally reliable, remember the band playing almost to the final plunge.

  Harold Bride recalls their music while he was on the roof of the officers’ quarters struggling to free Collapsible B. Greaser Thomas Ranger heard them when he came up from turning off 45 fans to find all the boats gone. But perhaps the musicians’ best epitaph comes from the testimony of Steward Edward Brown at the British Inquiry. When asked how long he heard the band play, Brown replied, “I do not remember hearing them stop.”

  What were they playing? All agree that the band featured light, cheerful music—ragtime, waltzes, and the comic songs that were then so popular in the London music halls. Survivors specifically recalled Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and a pretty English melody called “In the Shadows,” the big London hit of 1911. Colonel Gracie couldn’t remember the name of any tune, but he was sure the beat was lively to the end. Nevertheless, the Carpathia had no sooner reached New York than the story spread that the band went down playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” The idea was so appealing that it instantly became part of the Titanic saga—as imperishable as the enduring love of the Strauses and the courage of the engineers who kept the lights burning to the final plunge.

  Yet doubts persist. In the first place, the whole point of the band playing was to keep the passengers’ spirits up, and light music seems best suited to that. As Colonel Gracie observed, “If ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ was one of the selections, I assuredly would have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death, and more likely to create a panic that our special efforts were directed towards avoiding….”

  Moreover, no one up close remembered it. For instance, Mrs. A. A. Dick of Calgary, Alberta, vividly recalled seeing the musicians lined up on deck playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee”…yet she was in Boat 3, at least a quarter-mile away. On the other hand, passengers Peter Daly and Dick Williams—both on board to the last—agreed with Colonel Gracie: the band played only light, cheerful music.

  Finally, we must face the hymnologists. They point out that both British and American survivors recalled “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” but ordinarily the hymn is played to entirely different music on the two sides of the Atlantic. In America the setting is normally Lowell Mason’s haunting tune “Bethany”; but in Britain the standard Episcopal setting is J. B. Dykes’s “Horbury,” while the Methodists prefer Sir Arthur Sullivan’s “Propior Deo.” Unless the band played all three versions (an absurdity), more than half of those who remembered the hymn must have been mistaken.

  Sunday service on British liners of the period was normally Church of England, which suggests that Dykes’s “Horbury” was used, but to balance that, Bandmaster Hartley had a strong Methodist background. In his hometown, Colne, his father served as choirmaster at the local Methodist church for 30 years and invariably used Sullivan’s “Propior Deo.” Hartley himself favored this setting, according to a fellow musician who had played with him on another ship. His friends and relatives firmly believed that this was the version played on the Titanic, and in fact, the opening bars are carved on the monument over his grave.

  The controversy over “Nearer, My God, to Thee” had barely begun when The New York Times introduced a brand-new candidate for the band’s final number. Based on an exclusive interview with Second Wireless Operator Harold Bride appearing April 19, the morning after the Carpathia reached New York, the paper announced on April 21 that the musicians went down playing the Episcopal hymn “Autumn.”

  The story included an illustration reproducing several lines of the music, and also quoted three stanzas. The first line ran “God of mercy and compassion, look with pity on my pain,” and even more appropriate were two lines in the third stanza:

  Hold me up in mighty waters;

  Keep my eyes on things above.

  The hymn completely fitted the occasion, and Bride was the perfect authority. He was no distant observer; he was on the Boat Deck to the last. As a wireless operator, he was trained to be meticulously accurate. So “Autumn” it was, both in A Night to Remember and in accounts by other writers attempting to get below the surface and discover what really happened.

  Then once again, the hymnologists. This time they pointed out that “Autumn” is the name of a hymn tune, and that in both Britain and America hymns are customarily known by their first line, not by the name of the music that provides the setting. Hence we refer to “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” not its tune, “Saint Gertrude,” and a choir sings “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” not its tune, “Saint Ann.” The same goes for “Autumn.” If Harold Bride meant a hymn, he would have referred to it by the opening line of some hymn that used this piece of music as a setting.

  Even then it would not have been “God of Mercy and Compassion,” for there is no Episcopal hymn that begins that way. “Autumn” was an alternate setting for the Episcopal hymn “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” but it seems to have been rarely used and was dropped from the hymnal after 1916.

  The hymnologists’ case against “Autumn” came through in driblets, and it wasn’t until research began on this book that it became clear how convincing it was. The arguments are neatly summarized by Jessica M. Kerr in her article “A Hymn to Remember,” appearing in the January 1976 issue of the magazine The Hymn.

  What, then, was Bride referring to when he mentioned “Autumn”? The most likely answer is contained in a series of letters written to me in 1957 by Fred G. Vallance of Detroit, Michigan. Mr. Vallance was bandleader of the Cunard Liner Laconia at the time of the Titanic and was writing from the point of view of a shipboard musician. He pointed out that whatever the band played, it had to be something they all knew by heart—something that could be played in the dark, on a sloping deck, and without the benefit of sheet music. The hymn tune “Autumn” did not remotely meet these requirements, but a currently popular waltz, “Songe d’Automne,” did.

  “Songe d’Automne,” moreover, was generally known simply as “Autumn.” Composed by Archibald Joyce, it was never very popular in America, but was a major hit in London in 1912. Played at roller-skating rinks, cafés, and the like, Harold Bride would probably have known it, and he might well have assumed that his American interviewers understood what he meant.

  Certainly Bride never referred to “Autumn” as a hymn in his original interview of April 19. He specifically mentioned the tune three different times, but always casually, like a popular song that needed no further explanation. For instance:

  From aft came the tunes of the band. 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….

  Nor did The New York Times ever check back with Bride on its article two days later, unveiling “Autumn” as the hymn the band played at the end. The story was clearly based on the original interview, without further amplification.

  It’s interesting to note that the British press never accepted the idea that the band went down playing any hymn called “Autumn.” The Daily Telegraph carried the April 19 interview with Bride, but identified “Autumn” as a “ragtime air.” This it certainly was not, but the description does indicate that the editors never thought Bride meant a hymn.

  Nor did seafaring people think so at the time. According to Vallance, the general opinion among ship musicians was that the Titanic’s band played “Songe d’Automne” at least part of the time, and he himself was told this by more than one survivor. Once when he was playing it, a ship’s steward (ap
parently from the Titanic) came up and admonished him that it was “unlucky.”

  Fred Vallance presented his case in 1957, but its true significance wasn’t appreciated until research began on this book. The hymnologists had to demolish “Autumn” first. With that out of the way, his theory becomes the most plausible explanation of what really happened.

  But it is not carved in stone. There is always the possibility of some totally unexpected twist to the story. For instance, it is conceivable (though not at all likely) that the Café Parisien trio never joined forces with Wallace Hartley’s quintet, but continued to play as a separate group, ending with some hymn in another part of the ship. Then there is the question of what pianists Percy Taylor and Theodore Brailey were doing at the end, for it seems most unlikely, that anyone dragged a piano out onto the Boat Deck.

  Whatever they played, they achieved immortality. The bravery of these men, trying to bring hope and comfort to others without a thought to their own safety, captured the public’s imagination all over the world. Editorials, speeches, sermons, and reams of worshipful poetry celebrated the deed, and letters of condolence poured into the homes of the bereaved.

  Tucked in with the tributes received by the family of violinist Jock Hume, was a letter to his father that sounded a strangely jarring note. Dated April 30, 1912—just two weeks after the tragedy—it contained no words of sympathy, just a short, crisp reminder:

  Dear Sir:

  We shall be obliged if you will remit to us the sum of 5s. 4d., which is owing to us as per enclosed statement. We shall also be obliged if you will settle the enclosed uniform account.