The Band That Played On (21 page)

For Wallace Hartley, Roger Bricoux, and Theo Brailey, there were only a few days of catching up to do. There would have been light conversation about how they’d spent their time and perhaps about their regrets at not being able to see their families and girlfriends during their time off. Hartley, Brailey, and Hume were all planning weddings by the year’s end and Woodward was said to have a girlfriend in London.

If Hartley hadn’t already met Woodward and Hume, now was the time to introduce himself as bandleader. He’d no doubt heard good things about them from their mutual friend Edgar Heap and it was Hartley’s job now to exert his authority and explain what was expected. Perhaps Hartley had been given an advance passenger list in order to impress on his musicians the gravity of their task on this voyage. There was John Jacob Astor, one of the richest men in America; the steel tycoon Benjamin Guggenheim; historian Archibald Gracie; French aviator Pierre Maréchal; the American president’s chief military advisor, Archibald Butt; English fashion designer Lady Lucille Duff-Gordon; British journalist and author W. T. Stead; young film actress Dorothy Gibson; novelist Jacques Futrelle; Broadway producer Henry B. Harris; and the painter Francis Davis Millet. Then there was J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, and Harland & Wolff designer Thomas Andrews.

Theo Brailey would certainly have known who W. T. Stead was and may even have met him through his father because he was the best-known and most respected advocate of spiritualism in Britain. He was certainly the highest-profile Briton on the ship. He was on his way to New York to address a peace conference at Carnegie Hall for the Great Men and Religions Congress where he would share a stage with the black political leader Booker T. Washington, the great orator and politician William Jennings Bryan, and the president of the United States, William Howard Taft.

Fred Clarke, Georges Krins, and Percy Taylor must have felt like outsiders at this early stage. They knew how to play their instruments, but they had no experience working on a liner. They may have wondered how the rolling of the ship might affect their ability to play. The names and places that the others spoke about so knowingly wouldn’t have meant anything to them. There’s a chance that Taylor and Krins were already acquainted through musical circles in London. If they weren’t already familiar with each other, they would have found common ground in their knowledge of Vauxhall and Brixton. Of course, Krins and Bricoux would have been able to talk to each other in their native French tongue. Clarke may have still been feeling a little unwell or a little apprehensive, not knowing what life would be like on the ship plus wondering what he would discover when he arrived in New York to settle his father’s estate.

But the fellowship of music would soon have overridden the initial atmosphere of caution. Once they got their instruments out of their cases, the only thing that mattered was how well they played and how sensitive they were to each other’s moves. They would have already been given copies of the White Star Line’s current music book—actually a small booklet produced by the Black agency—that listed the titles of the 352 tunes the musicians needed to know. Each first-class passenger would have a copy and could call out the number of the tune, knowing the band could play it.

White Star music book listing 352 tunes.

Hartley would then have talked them through their duties. Three of the musicians would mainly be on B Deck playing in the reception room immediately outside the first-class à la carte restaurant or at the Café Parisien, which was on the starboard side of the ship. Their job was to create an ambience of the city that the
Daily Mirror
thought had become the contemporary equivalent of Athens—the city of philosophy, poetry, art, gastronomy, cabaret, dancing girls, pavement cafés, and love. They would have their own library of tunes that would differ from the library of the quintet.

The Prince of Wales was in Paris on a royal visit and the
Daily Mirror
had compared the delight of a Briton visiting Paris with that of a Roman youth making his way to Athens in a bygone age. Paris, it observed, was where the daughters of the rich went for a year to improve themselves. “It is a wise choice, and an example bound to be followed by innumerable youths of humbler birth in England. The Americans, more generally than ourselves, have realized how much Paris can contribute to education.” Paris was a “civilising city” and a “studious city” that made London seem crude and frivolous by comparison.

The Parisien was an innovation introduced on the
Titanic—
a French café with wicker chairs and large picture windows that could be rolled up when the weather was good, that served coffee and pastries. The à la carte restaurant differed from the main saloon in providing a choice of as many as ten courses and allowing passengers to eat at a time of their choice. The cost of meals here was not included in the fare. All bills had to be settled at the tables by cash or check. It had the effect of creating a class division even among first-class passengers—the division between the rich and the really rich.

The other five musicians would play in a variety of places, mainly in the first-class lounge during afternoon tea and the dining saloon on D Deck for luncheon and dinner. Passengers reported hearing them in the second-class reading room, the first-class reception area, the companionway, and the Palm Room. In addition they could be asked to play at the Anglican church service conducted by the captain on Sunday morning in the dining saloon, and on special occasions such as galas, concerts, and receptions.

By 11:30 a number of the musicians were assembled in the first-class reception area playing music to welcome the ship’s most wealthy and glamorous passengers on board. That job done, they would have had to hurry back downstairs to be in place as a quintet and a trio in the dining saloon and outside the à la carte restaurant, respectively, for the first luncheons to be served on the ship.

The Southampton dock from which the
Titanic
sailed as it looks today.

The
Titanic
left its moorings at midday pulled by its tugs and was still in Southampton Water when it narrowly avoided a collision with the American steamer
New York
. The suction caused by the displacement of the
Titanic
’s bulk was so strong that it snapped the
New York
’s mooring ropes, causing the ship to swing toward her. Only quick action by the
Vulcan
, one of the
Titanic
’s tugs, prevented a minor disaster. Passengers and crew were aware of what was happening, as it delayed the exit from Southampton by an hour.

Without doubt Brailey and Woodward would have had flashbacks of their previous experience of being rammed by another vessel in the same waters. Passenger Lawrence Beesley wrote:

As we steamed down the river, the scene we had just witnessed was the topic of every conversation. The comparison with the
Olympic
-
Hawke
collision was drawn in every little group of passengers, and it seemed to be generally agreed that this would confirm the suction theory which was so successfully advanced by the cruiser
Hawke
in the law courts, but which many people scoffed at when the British Admiralty first suggested it as the explanation of the cruiser ramming the
Olympic
.

This was not a minor near miss that we only know about now because it could seem to be an omen; it was reported and commented on at the time. The
Daily Telegraph
of April 11 headlined the story “An Alarming Incident”:

A sensational incident attended the sailing of the
Titanic
yesterday, from Southampton, on her maiden voyage. Having to pass at the Test Quay the liners
Oceanic
and
New York
, the latter seems to have been so seriously affected by the suction of the
Titanic
’s screws that her stern ropes, seven in number, parted, and her stern swung into midstream. The
Titanic
’s engines were stopped and the
New York
was towed to another berth.

The
Titanic
’s first stop was in Cherbourg, France, which it reached at 5:30, anchoring outside the port and taking on passengers and mail from two tenders. The musicians were already playing for diners taking tea or for the early evening meal, delayed because of the late start. The placid mood was captured in a recently discovered letter written by perfumer Adolph Saalfeld to his wife in the late hours of that first day:

Daily Telegraph
report on
Titanic
’s near collision on leaving Southampton.

The weather is calm and fine, the sky overcast . . . I have quite an appetite for luncheon. Soup, fillet of plaice, a loin chop with cauliflower and fried potatoes, Apple Manhattan and Roquefort cheese, washed down with a large Spaten beer iced, so you can see I am not faring badly. I had a long promenade and a doze for an hour up to 5 ‘o’ clock. The band played in the afternoon for tea but I savour a coffee in the Veranda café with bread and butter and quite thought I should have to pay but everything in the eating line is
gratis
.

By 11:30 the musicians would have completed their duties and have been making their way back down to E Deck. Either then or early the next morning, Wallace Hartley wrote what would be his last letter home, a letter to be taken ashore by tender at Queenstown when the
Titanic
put down anchor and took on its final passengers. “Just a line to say we have got away all right. It has been a bit of a rush but I am just getting a little settled,” he wrote. “This is a fine ship and there ought to be plenty of money around. We have a fine band and the boys seem very nice. I missed coming home very much and it would have been nice to have seen you all, if only for an hour or two, but I could not manage it. Shall probably arrive home on the Sunday morning. All love, Wallace.”

It’s hard to imagine that he didn’t also write to Maria Robinson, expressing the same regret at not meeting and the desire to see her as soon as possible after his intended arrival back in Southampton on Saturday, April 27. His sight of the Irish coastline as it slipped by the starboard side of the
Titanic
was the last he’d ever see of dry land. The observation made by almost everyone who survived is the contrast between the smoothness and uneventfulness of the ship’s progress across the Atlantic and the enormity of the tragedy they were about to take part in.

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.