RMS Carpathia arrived an hour after the RMS Titanic sunk to her watery grave. Her rockets were spotted by those in the lifeboats at three thirty that morning.
The RMS Carpathia was owned by the Cunard Line. Her maiden voyage was on May 5, 1903. {She would be Torpedoed off Ireland by German submarine on July 17, 1918}. She left New York City on April 11, 1912 and was sailing towards Fiume, Austria-Hungary {now Rijeka, Croatia} on April 14, 1912.
Harold Cottam was the Carpathia wireless operator. He missed the initial Titanic SOS messages because he was on deck. When he returned Cape Race, Newfoundland told him of the CQD/SOS messages and he then received Titanic’s distress signal. He awakened Captain Rostron who immediately set sail for Titanic. They were fifty-eight miles away from the sinking vessel.
Captain Arthur Henry Rostron was given the command of the RMS Carpathia on January 18, 1912. He went to sea when he was thirteen years old. In January 1895 he joined the Cunard Line. In 1912 Captain Rostron and RMS Carpathia made regular trips from New York City to Fiume, Italy. Headed to Europe the vessel carried a large number of tourist. On the return trip to New York City the steamer would carry emigrants.
This was the first disaster Captain Rostron responded to. However, he spared no effort or cost. He ordered that his lifeboats be swung out, all gangway doors opened, stewards to keep passengers and survivors separate, blankets prepared, extra rooms and the library and smoking rooms prepared, soup and hot drinks ready, rope ladders and extra chairs used to bring the survivors on board, pursers to gather names and stewards to see after the survivors, and the doctor summoned. He clearly rose to the challenge and acted in a timely and professional manner.
Understanding the severity of the situation, Captain Rostron ordered all heat sources to be cut off. This allowed the boilers to work faster, build more power and produce more steam. This could have been very dangerous with so much ice and he understood this, posting additional lookouts.
The Carpathia arrived at the scene at four o’clock in the morning. The Captain and crew were met with a scene of the vast ocean and nothing else upon reaching the given concordance of the Titanic’s location. Captain Rostrom testified they were met with “only a sea covered with wreckage and debris”. He ordered the engines stopped as the crew searched for life. Finally someone pointed out a flare from a lifeboat in the distance.
The passengers on Carpathia were stunned by the scene that greeted them the morning of Monday, April 15, 1912. One passenger described it as “fields of ice on which, like points on the landscape, rested innumerable pyramids of ice.”
On board Carpathia was Charles H. Marshall, whose three nieces were travelling aboard the Titanic. {All three women survived and were surprised to find their uncle upon being rescued}.
Lifeboat number two was the first to be rescued at 4:10am. She was under the command of Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall. Elizabeth Walton Allen was the first passenger to be brought aboard Carpathia. She confirmed to the crew that Titanic had indeed sunk.
As passengers were brought on board many were in shock or sobbing, while others quietly reflected on the events of that night. Many were still under the impression that their loved ones had been saved and rescued.
The rescue effort took over four hours. Survivors were brought aboard by a variety of means such as climbing rope ladders, slings, chairs and children hoisted up in mail sacks.
The last lifeboat to reach the Carpathia was number twelve. There were seventy-four people on board, including Office Lightoller, who was the last to board the vessel. Some of the boats had been adrift for eight hours. All of Titanic survivors were on the Carpathia by nine o’clock that morning.
On board the Carpathia survivors looked for their loved ones. A few had joyful scenes of being reunited, but most saw their hopes dashed as their loved ones failed to appear and reality began to sink in. After being rescued all of the survivors were inspected by a doctor and given food and drink.
The final count onboard the Carpathia was 705 survivors out of 2223 that had started the Southhampton to New York voyage.
After everyone was on board Captain Rostron held a service and moment of silence over the disaster site for those lost at sea.
Due to insufficient resources, Captain Rostrom decided to return to New York instead of continuing on to Europe.
The California arrived at the site of the disaster at 8:30am. Hearing of the sinking she worked her way through the ice to be of assistance. Finding no other survivors she then continued on to Boston.
Titanic’s wireless operator, Harold Bride, was taken to Carpathia’s wireless room where he worked with Harold Cottam. The men did not leave the room and worked transmit a list of survivors names and personal messages to relatives. The men even refused to answer a request from President Taft, requesting information on his military advisor Archibald Butt.
“One of the messages that the New York White Star line did receive from the Carpathia confirming the disaster is as follows: Steamship Carpathia, April 17, 1912 (via Halifax)
Deeply regret advise you Titanic sank this morning, after collision iceberg, resulting serious loss life. Further particulars later. Bruce Ismay. This was received by Mr. Franklin at the White Star office in New York at 9 a.m. on April 17. Two days after the sinking. This gives you an idea of how slow news was traveling.”
Now the passengers and survivors aboard Carpathia had nothing to do but wait to reach New York.
Sunday, April 14, 1912 was coming to an end on the Titanicwhen tragedy struck. That morning passengers attended church services with Captain Smith officiating the First Class sermon. In the evening some first and second class passengers had a hymn sing. A lifeboat drill had been planned for that Sunday morning, but was cancelled for [now] unknown reasons.
Titanic was the largest ship in the world, beating her sister ship, Olympic by one hundred feet. She had the largest engines ever on a ship and was able to generate more steam than any ship. She had the capability of carrying 3,547 people. There were 2,223 people aboard preparing to sleep for the night and the majority of them were not worried. {There were a small handful that testified to premonitions and at least one passenger refused to sleep during at night.} These crew members and passengers had every confidence in the vessel on which they were sailing.
Throughout the day Titanic received a number of ice warnings. The first two were acknowledged by Captain Smith. He’d even ordered a new course, farther south, after receiving a report from RMS Caronia at nine o’clock that morning and RMS Baltic at 1:42pm. That afternoon there were problems with the Marconi wireless equipment. The operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride spend over six hours that afternoon repairing the faulty machinery. The company that owned the equipment suggested operators wait until they returned to port and allow company technicians to fix the faulty equipment. If Phillips and Bride had followed company protocol, most likely no help signals would have been able to be sent out after the disaster occurred. No one would have known the Titanic needed help and very possibly everyone aboard would have perished.
Ice conditions were the worst they’d been in the last fifty years. With no moon and a calm sea, Captain Smith and his crew had a false sense of safety. Archibald Gracie testified “the sea was like glass, so smooth that the stars were clearly reflected”. The ice conditions were attributed to a mild winter which caused a large number of icebergs to break away from the coast of Greenland. Research now shows that the high tides were due to the fact that in January of that year the moon had moved closer to earth than any time in the past fourteen hundred years. There were at least four other ice warnings that did not reach Captain Smith that day. A final message received from Californian at 10:30pm and Phillips replied “Shut up! Shut up! I’m working Cape Race.”
Unaware of the additional ice warnings, the ship did not reduce speed and was running at twenty-two knots {approximately twenty-five miles per hour}. These vessels were constantly driven at close to their full speed, treating hazard warnings as advisories rather than calls to action. It was widely believed that ice posed little risk; near misses were not uncommon, and even head-on collisions had not been disastrous. Harold Lowe testified that standard maritime practice was “to go ahead and depend upon the lookouts in the crow’s nest and the watch on the bridge to pick up the ice in time to avoid hitting it.” Captain Smith even declared this in a 1907 interview where he said “imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.”
Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee were the lookouts in the crow nest having gone on duty at ten o’clock that evening. The men had no binoculars with them on this maiden voyage. Fleet spotted the iceberg at 11:39pm. He immediately rang the bell and told Sixth Officer James Moody “iceberg right ahead”. Moody attempted to turn the ship to port {left}. Testimony showed that Moody told Captain Smith he was trying to swing the bow around the iceberg. The engines could not be immediately reversed and it took time to reverse the engines and tillers which resulted in a delay. Had the ship been turned while maintaining full speed the iceberg would most likely have been missed with feet to spare. Less than a minute after spotting the iceberg, the ship collided with the object.
The iceberg was only about two hundred feet above the surface but below the surface it is believed the object went down an additional one thousand feet. The underwater ice scraped the starboard {right} side of the ship for about seven seconds causing chunks of ice to fall onto the deck. The engines stopped minutes later, but the damage was already done as the iceberg buckled the plates and popped the rivets. Boiler room number six soon filled with icy water. The engineers and stokers worked fervently to keep the boilers from exploding from the hot pressure of the steam. The stokers and firemen were ordered to draw down the fire and vent the boilers. Thomas Andrews, the designer, had built Titanic to stay afloat with four of her sixteen bulkheads flooded. Each bulkhead was separated by a watertight door, which was immediately closed as water began to seep into the vessel. Water soon spilled over from one bulkhead into the next. One historian said “There has only been one iceberg, and its history lasted for a minute”.
Many passengers felt a bump or shudder but did not know what it was. Captain Smith felt the collision in his cabin, after going to the deck and being told of the situation he summoned Thomas Andrews. An inspection showed that five of her bulkheads were now flooded and Thomas Andrews had the unfortunate job of explaining to Captain Smith that Titanic would indeed flounder within the next hour to ninety minutes. By this time water was pouring in fifteen times faster than she could be pumped out. In the first half hour of impact the ship angled at a 4.5 degree angle, but then slowed down to a five degree angle over the next hour, which gave many aboard a false hope. Both men knew there were not enough boats to save the 892 crew members and 1,320 passengers onboard.
Captain Smith ordered the lifeboats to be lowered at five minutes after midnight. {Time was shipboard time. Testimony shows they were about two hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time}. The Captain also told Phillips and Bride to send distress calls out over the wireless. The mail sorters began moving mail up to the top deck in an effort to save the correspondence. Stewards began moving from door to door to rouse the sleeping passengers. At first many of the passengers and stewards were reluctant to comply, not wanting to believe there was a problem and longing to remain in their warm rooms. At fifteen minutes after midnight stewards began ordering passengers to put on their lifebelts. Due to the sound of the high pressure steam moving from the boilers through the funnels, most on deck found it difficult to hear and had to use hand signals to communicate. Captain Smith was in shock and Officer Lightoller asked if “women and children first” should be loaded into the lifeboats. When the Captain nodded in affirmation Lightoller took charge on the port side and Murdoch took charge on the starboard side. The two officers interpreted the orders completely differently. Lightoller thought it meant women and children only and lowered lifeboats with empty seats if not women or children were around. Murdoch believed the orders meant women and children first and allowed men to board the lifeboats if no women or children were around.
The lifeboats were able to hold about sixty-eight people, but the first lifeboat to leave only had twenty-eight people aboard. Titanic was designed to accommodate sixty-eight lifeboats but only had sixteen wooden and four collapsible boats onboard. These boats were intended to be used in event of emergency to transfer passengers to another ship and not to clear the entire boat. The majority of passenger ships at that time did not have enough lifeboats for their passengers, however had more than the law required. Due to lack of training the crew was unprepared for such an emergency. All reports seem to show that Captain Smith was in shock. In his long and illustrious career the only collision he’d encountered at sea was when the Olympic collided with the RMS Hawke and was damaged. The band came on deck and began to play music to keep the passengers calm. At first they played upbeat ragtime pieces but most people believe the final song they played was “Nearer, My God, To Thee.”
Passengers were reluctant to load the lifeboats at first. John Jacob Astor declared: “We are safer here than in that little boat.” Rocket flares were sent up as a call for help. The California was nearby but the wireless operator turned his radio off at eleven thirty that evening. First and second class passengers had a better chance of reaching a lifeboat, than third class. This is because United States immigration laws required third class stay quarranted so there was no spread of disease.
By 1:45am the boiler rooms were completely flooded. Lifeboat fifteen was nearly lowered onto another lifeboat. Lifeboat eleven was filled overcapacity. There were not enough seamen to man the boats and other men were allowed to enter to help row. In many of the boats the women helped to man the oars. Panic began to erupt in the last fifteen minutes of the lifeboats being lowered. The severity of the situation was beginning to register with the passengers. Fifth Officer Lowe fired three warning shots to restrain the crowd. The last boat, Collapsible D, was launched at five minutes after two o’clock in the morning with forty-four people onboard. Shortly after this boat left Captain Smith is reported to say “Now it’s every man for himself.”
The Carpathia answered the Titanic’s distress call at 12:25 am. The last CQD message was received by The Virginian at 2:17am. Half an hour earlier RMS Olympic messaged from 500 miles away: “Am lighting up all possible boilers as fast as can”. But it was too late.
At 2:15am the stern began to lift to a thirty five to forty degree angle and water rapidly poured into the ship. Father Thomas Byles was hearing confessions and giving absolutions. Thomas Andrews was last seen in the first-class smoking room, without a lifebelt, staring at the painting above the fireplace. No one knows for sure where Captain Smith was in those final moments, but there reports of seeing him on deck or headed toward the wheelhouse.
Survivors reported hearing a great noise which is now believed to be the boilers exploding. Beesley described it as “partly a groan, partly a rattle, and partly a smash, and it was not a sudden roar as an explosion would be: it went on successively for some seconds, possibly fifteen to twenty”. The stern was now raised to a ninety degree angle as the ship split in two. After another minute, the lights flickered once and then permanently went out, plunging Titanic into darkness. Jack Thayer recalled seeing “groups of the fifteen hundred people still aboard, clinging in clusters or bunches, like swarming bees; only to fall in masses, pairs or singly as the great after part of the ship, two hundred fifty feet of it, rose into the sky.”
Titanic sank at 2:20am. Two hours and twenty minutes after she hit the iceberg. Mrs. Stephenson in lifeboat number 4 stated, “She then gave her final plunge and the air was filled with cries. We rowed back and pulled five more men from the sea. Their suffering from the icy water was intense and two men who had been pulled into the stern afterwards died, but we kept their bodies with us until we reached the Carpathia, where they were taken aboard and Monday (April 15) afternoon given a decent burial with three others.”
Hundreds were plunged into the icy waters, which were reported to be twenty-eight degrees. The cries of those fighting for their lives were horrific. Second Officer Lightoller described the feeling of “a thousand knives” being driven into his body as he entered the sea. Some of those in the water died of immediate heart attacks but many died from hypothermia which can take about twenty minutes on average. The pocket watch recovered from a victim showed the time stopped at 2:28am. As Beesley later wrote, the cries “came as a thunderbolt, unexpected, inconceivable, incredible. No one in any of the boats standing off a few hundred yards away can have escaped the paralyzing shock of knowing that so short a distance away a tragedy, unbelievable in its magnitude, was being enacted, which we, helpless, could in no way avert or diminish.” “The sounds of people drowning is something that I cannot describe to you and neither can anyone else. It is the most dreadful sound and their is a terrible silence that follows it.”, described Eva Hart years later.
Only a few in the water survived by swimming to collapsible Boat B. Second Officer Charles Lightoller, wireless operator Harold Bride, chief baker Charles Joughin and Archibald Gracie finally found their way onto the keel of the collapsible. Jack Phillips also made it onto this collapsible but he did not survive the night. After twenty minutes the cries subsided as death overtook those in the water and there was a long silence. Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon recalled after the disaster a man cried in a dull, monotonous and helpless way. She said that “the very last cry was that of a man who had been calling loudly: “My God! My God!”
Another survivor would remember the “People were screaming and screaming and then the silence was terrible.”
After the yells and shrieks subsided Fifth Officer Lowe mounted the solo rescue attempt to help those in the water. The tied five lifeboats together, transferred the occupants and took eight men to help him find survivors. Only a few voices could still be heard. Five people were rescued from the water. Survivor Ida Hippach said “the water was very still and the sky had many stars! You can’t think how it felt out there all alone by ourselves in the Atlantic. And there were so many shooting stars I never saw so many in my life. You know they say when you see a shooting star someone is dying. We thought of that, for there were so many dying, not far from us.”
Most of the lifeboats were not properly stocked with emergency provisions. Only one had a lantern. As dawn approached the wind rose and the sea became increasingly choppy. The only thing survivors could do now was to wait and wonder if they would be rescued. Second Office Charles Lightoller and wireless operator Harold Bride were the only ones aware that help was on the way. Carpathia was headed in their direction. Can you imagine being in that life boats, having just experienced this terrible tragedy? Now you are waiting, but you’re not sure what you are waiting for. What would you be waiting for?
The crew kept the ship running smoothly and it took a cast of thousands to keep this huge vessel running smoothly.
The 322 stewards and twenty-three female crew aboard performing more than fifty-seven different functions in the dining saloon’s of each class, public rooms, cabins and recreational facilities. Today we would refer to these men and women as a waiter, waitress, maid, or attendant.
Each class had their own bath and bedroom stewards. These included keeping the areas were supplied, assisting passengers with dressing and serve passengers that desire to eat in their room. These poorly paid crew members were responsible for anywhere from three to twenty five rooms depending on their clientele. Separate stewards were responsible for maintaining clean bed sheets, bathroom towels and table linens.
There were sixty-two individuals working in the galley and kitchen. These consisted of chefs, cooks, bakers, butchers, and scullions {dishwashers}. Thirteen of these crew members survived.
The Purser’s Office employed four clerks to deal with the passenger’s needs and requests.
Below ship the engineers and coal men worked to keep the engines running smoothly. Their sleeping conditions were cramped bunk rooms.
Above deck Captain Smith and his officers were on duty to steer and navigate the vessel.
Below is just a few of the crew that worked on this beautiful ship:
Captain Edward John Smith had been working for the White Star Line since 1880. He quickly rose through the ranks to become the favorite Captain of many first class passengers. He was known as the “Millionaire’s Captain” and some passengers would only sail with him. He was regarded as a “safe captain” in 1903. He captained such ships as the Majestic, Baltic and Adriatic, all the largest ships of their days. When Titanic’s sister ship, Olympic, launched in 1911, Captain Smith was put in charge. He had a reputation as the one of the world’s most experienced sea captain. He was in charge of the Olympic when it collided with the HMS Hawke on September 20, 1911. The repairs on Olympic pushed back Titanic’s maiden voyage almost three weeks. Most reports stated that Captain Smith planned to retire after Titanic’s maiden voyage. However according to Wikipedia the Halifax Morning Chronicle reported on April 9, 1912 that “Smith would remain in charge of Titanic “until the Company (White Star Line) completed a larger and finer steamer.” On the night of April 14, 1912 he attended a dinner party in honor of George Widener. Stories vary as to how Captain Smith spent his final moments, but he went down with his ship. His body was never recovered. Edward J. Smith left behind a wife and young daughter. A monument was erected to him in Lichfield, England.
Violet Jessop was the oldest of nine children. She began working on the Olympic in October 1910 as a stewardess. She was aboard when the vessel collided with the HMS Hawke. She was on the Titanic’s maiden voyage in the same capacity. She was ordered into lifeboat 16, where she cared for an infant. She said the next morning on the Carpathia a woman grabbed the child without saying a word. After the Titanic sinking, she served on the Olympic and Britannic. She was aboard the Britannic in 1916 when the ship hit a mine and sunk in the Aegean Sea. She said she was sucked under and later pulled into a lifeboat. She continued working for the White Star Line and later the Red Star Line, where she took two around the world cruises. At some point she wrote her memoir which were not published until after her 1971 death.
Harold Bride and Jack Phillips were the two British wireless telegraphists that worked tirelessly after the Titanic collided with an iceberg. Phillips was from Surrey, England. He began work for the Marconi Company in 1906 and worked on several ships for both the White Star Line and Cunard Line. Bride was the youngest of five children from London, England. He began working for the Marconi Company in 1911. On April 11, the day the ship sailed, the duo celebrated Philips 25th birthday. On Saturday there was equipment failure and it took all day for them to get it back up and running properly. Reports show Philips delayed in transmitting an iceberg warning to the bridge, at 9:30pm, that could have prevented this disaster. Philips sent out CQD and SOS messages while Bride ran messages back and forth to the Captain. Bride reported that Phillips continued working after Captain Smith released them at 2am. Both men were swept overboard and swam to overturned lifeboat B. Phillips did not survive, and Bride said he’d most likely exhausted himself earlier. Bride survived and assisted the wireless operator on the Carpathia. He had to be carried off of the Carpathia due to injuries to his feet. He continued to work as a Marconi officer aboard ship vessels and died in 1956.
William Murdock was on the bridge during the collision. He worked diligently to help load the lifeboats. He had sixteen years maritime experience behind him. He served as First Officer on the Maiden Voyage. The body of the Scotsman was never found.
Harold Lowe was from Wales. He claimed to run away at fourteen and begin a life at sea. The Titanic was his first trip on the North Atlantic. He was put in lifeboat 14 to help row. He later gathered five lifeboats together and tied them to one another, as he redistributed the passengers. He took the only lifeboat that returned to look for survivors in the water. He picked up four survivors, one of which died in the lifeboat. He remained at sea and joined the Royal Naval Reserve during WWI. He died in 1944.
Charles Lightoller was from Lancashire, England. He went to sea at the age of thirteen and by 1895 survived a cyclone, shipwreck and fire at sea. He briefly left the sea life for other pursuits but soon returned. He served as Second Officer on the Maiden Voyage. He helped load the lifeboats. Once in the water he saw for Collapsible Boat B and stayed upon it all night. He was the most senior surviving officer to survive. He served in both WWI and WWII British Navy. He died in 1952.
Frederick Fleet was a lookout for the Titanic when she hit the iceberg. He’d been at sea for nine years by the time of the Titanic disaster. He reported “Iceberg Right Ahead” to the bridge. He helped load the boats, survived and continued working on the sea until 1936. He died in 1964.
Charles Joughin was the chief baker that survived the cold 28 degrees of the Atlantic because of his alcohol level. At the time of the sinking he and some other chefs were filling the lifeboats with food and supplies. By all accounts he refused a lifeboat for himself, although he helped others board and threw deck chairs overboard. At some point he found time to consume a considerable amount of spirits. By all reports he stepped off the bow as the ship went down and into the water where he remained for over three hours. His testimony said he swam and treaded water until he was pulled into a lifeboat after daylight. He died in 1956.
There were five postal clerks, two American and three British. The five clerks worked to save the 200 bags of registered mail as the hauled the to the upper decks. None of these men survived.
There were twenty five engineers and ten electricians and boilermakers aboard ship. These men were the highest paid of the crew and none of them survived. These men worked feverishly after the collision to keep the ship afloat as long as possible. These men had also been battling a fire in Boiler Room 6 for most of the voyage. There were apparently 163 stokers to keep the boilers running. Only a handful of the stokers, trimmers and greasers survived. A memorial was erected to these men in Liverpool, England. PBS is currently running a very interesting special about these men and the work called “Saving the Titanic.”
The musicians on the RMS Titanic are considered heroes. They played under the worst circumstances and continued until the last possible moments.
All of the band members on board were considered Second Class Passengers. They were employed by Messrs C. W. & F. N. Black of Liverpool and not on the White Star Line payroll. The White Star Line had their own songbook and the musicians were expected to know all of these tunes by memory.
In total there were eight musicians on board. There were two groups that performed at different times and places. A quintet played at teatime, for after dinner parties and for Sunday Services. The trio consisted of a violin, cello and piano that played in the reception room outside the A la Carte Restaurant and the Café Parisian. When they gathered together as the Titanic began to sink, it was probably the first time they’d all played together. Dancing was not encouraged in this era, so the music served as a background to good conversation or a game of cards.
Wallace Hartley was the leader of the Titanic band. He’d been on the Cunard line, most notably Lusitania and Mauretania, which Olympic and Titanic were built to rival. The opportunity to play on Titanic with the riches and most distinguished passengers was too great of a lure for him, as it would be for almost any musician of the day.
As the first lifeboats loaded, these men gathered in the 1st Class Lounge where 1st class passengers were assembling to play. As the seriousness of the situation became apparent the band moved with passengers to the Boat Deck near the Grand Staircase.
We don’t know exactly what was played, but we do know the music was cheerful and gay. The selections were mostly ragtime selections and waltzes that gave the impression to the passengers on deck that all was under control; there was no need to panic. Many of the survivors expressed their gratitude to the Titanic band for helping to maintain an air of decorum during the scramble for the lifeboats. Others have criticized the band for playing. Some felt that having the band on deck gave people a false impression that things weren’t that bad and it caused many to take the situation lightly, thus preventing more from entering the life boats. This argument is left to conjecture, but what is known is that the band’s music did help to soothe the passengers and most likely prevented panic as the last of the boats were leaving.
At 2:00 A.M. the last boat, Collapsible D, left the ship. It was now 2:05 A.M. more than 1,500 people were still aboard. The Titanic sank lower and lower at the bow, and the stern began to rise out of the water. There was little time now. The band continued to play. The deck became so steep that bandmaster Hartley released the musicians from duty. Alone, he began the first notes of a simple hymn. One by one the bandsmen, choosing not to leave joined in. It was the last song the band would play and the last song survivors heard before the boat broke into two pieces. Minutes later the entire band was washed away by a sudden wave as the Titanic made its final plunge.
We know from a report to the Trade Union of Musicians of Britain that none of these men were wearing life jackets. One can only imagine how difficult it was to continue to play as the ship began to tilt and slowly moved upright. These men knew that they were in the last minutes to their lives. The Trade Union also reported that the musicians were ordered to play in order to avoid panic. Almost all of the survivor reports talk about how calm everyone was, and this due to the band playing.
On May 18, 1912, the body of bandmaster Wallace Hartley was laid to rest in what some called “pageantry beyond belief.” 30,000 mourners packed the streets of Colne, Hartley’s birthplace in the hills of Lancashire, England. Seven bands played as his rosewood casket was carried throughout the streets. Musicians, Aldermen, police, clergy, miners and the curious were all there to pay their respects to this Titanic hero. The world came to thank Hartley for his courage and for the courage of the other band members for their willingness to stay on deck and play, even while the Titanic was taking her last dive. Their courage and bravery was not in vain. The world that day said thank you.
One second class passenger said: “Many brave things were done that night, but none were more brave than those done by men playing minute after minute as the ship settled quietly lower and lower in the sea. The music they played served alike as their own immortal requiem and their right to be recalled on the scrolls of undying fame.”
A newspaper at the time reported “the part played by the orchestra on board the Titanic in her last dreadful moments will rank among the noblest in the annals of heroism at sea.” Neither White Star Line nor the C.W. & F.N. Black agency had any insurance on the musicians. Each company blamed the other. This sad occurrence caused much heartache and hardship for the families of these musicians.
Wallace Hartley’s body was only one of three of the musicians found and identified. His instrument was still strapped to his body. When a colleague, Lewis Cross, asked Harley about a shipwreck while serving on the Celtic. Hartley smiled and said, “Well, I don’t suppose it will ever happen, but you know music is a bigger weapon than a gun in a big emergency, and I think that a band could do more to calm passengers than all the officers.” Elwane Moody reported that when asked about a sinking, Hartley replied, “I don’t think I could do better than play “O God, Our Help In Ages Past” or “Nearer My God, To Thee.”
As we all know, it’s believed the last song the band played before the Titanic went under was “Nearer My God, To Thee.”
Next week check out Singingthesonginmyheart for more on the musicians and songs of the Titanic.
Today, it is easy to get in our cars and go wherever we want. Depending on traffic and our destination we can often be there within minutes to hours. A century ago only the very rich had a vehicle. If you lived in a rural area, you were more likely to walk or take a horse and buggy into town. Let’s take a look at some of the modes of transportation commonly used a century ago.
1. Walking-—it was very common for people to walk. It cost nothing and you just need to go {as long as you’re physically able}. Children walked to school, mother’s walked to the store and to visit with neighbors. Towns were often in clusters and the people lived close by. If you lived in town you didn’t have far to go, and many of those that lived on the outskirts of town were only a mile or two away.
John Jacob Astor walking with his dog
2. Horse and buggy-—horse and buggy were still one of the common forms of transportation. A man could easily saddle up and head to town. If he was taking the family with him, he would hitch the horses to a buggy. If you wanted to visit a nearby town or haul materials nearby, the horse and buggy was the perfect means of transportation.
old time Horse and Buggy
3. Bicycles—-bicycles were also another form of transportation that was available at this time. You most likely found them more in large cities. In the smaller, Southern towns where many worked in the mills they were not able to afford a bicycle.
1912 bicycle
4. Cars—-1912 was the last year the high-wheel motor buggy was in it’s heyday. It resembled the horse and buggy of the previous century. It was quickly replaced by the Ford Model T. These early vehicles had a pedal based control system. Ford produced 22% of the cars during this decade, with a rate of 26,000 per month. Only the rich were usually able to afford to own a vehicle of their own.
1912 Car
5. Ships—-ships were the common way to travel across the ocean. The most popular ship of 1912, was the Titanic. Many of the aristocrats were using it to return home from their travels abroad in Europe. However, most of those in third class were emigrating to the United States or Canada to start over and have a new life. Times were often hard in their homeland and they longed to make a better life for themselves and their children. The Titanic and her sister ship, Olympic, were the top of the line in luxury ships. Some said the accommodations in third class were as nice as second class and even first class on other ships. Ship travel was popular for both the traveling rich and the poor emigrant looking to improve his/her circumstances.
Titanic: Most Famous Ship of 1912
6. Railroad—-by the turn of the twentieth century the railroad had spread across the country. Many used this as a means of transportation across the country. My great-grandfather used it to move his growing family from Tennessee to South Carolina in 1905. For many years he used it to travel back and forth to visit with family. On one such trip he was talking with the man sitting beside him, only to discover the man was his brother he’d not seen in over thirty years. His brother came out each year after this to visit by using the railway.
Old Timey Train
We take the ease of transportation for granted today. Many of these modes were in their infancy a century ago. Other current standard modes, such as flying, were only accomplished by the birds. Some of these means of transportation have changed over the last decade. Today we walk, horseback ride and bike for exercise and enjoyment. A cruise or railroad journey are a luxury we indulge ourselves with. The horse and buggy are a thing of the past. If things have changed this much in the past century, what will transportation be like 100 years from now?
ALookThruTime 