The Last Night on the Titanic by Veronica Hinke

Author:Veronica Hinke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery History

Edith Rosenbaum Russell was outspoken in her contention that the ship’s band did not play “Nearer My God to Thee,” and that it did not continue playing as the Titanic sank. “When people say music played as the ship went down, that is a ghastly, horrible lie,” she told the BBC.

Third class passenger Gherson Coen agreed that the band did not play as the ship went down. He said he heard the band playing when the boat struck the iceberg, when he was trying to get on deck, but when he decided to jump, he saw the musicians standing back, holding their instruments.

Other survivors told a different story.

Colonel Archibald Gracie said he heard a cheerful tune he couldn’t recognize. He said he surely would have recognized “Nearer My God to Thee.”

“I assuredly should have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death to us all and one likely to create panic,” he said. Some recalled that shortly after 1:00 a.m., the band, each member now secured in his life vest, switched from the ragtime tunes they had been playing to an Episcopal hymn, “Autumn”:

Shall we all meet in the Autumn?

Golden and glowing by Autumn

Shae we still be best of friends?

Best of friends . . .

All through each languorous season

We ebb and flow

Romance, defying all reason

Will come, then go

Still, perhaps this Autumn

Love won’t retreat in the Autumn

All that we have won’t be past

. . . . Won’t be past

Let breezes blow

And turn cold

As we continue growing old

This Autumn

Love newly found

May yet last

Dr. Henry Washington Dodge said that when the boats were leaving, the ship rockets were going up from the Titanic and the orchestra was playing “Lead, Kindly Light.”

First class steward Edward Brown survived the sinking and told investigators that he didn’t recall hearing the band stop playing. Steward Brown said he heard them playing for a long time on the boat deck, between the first and second funnels. And he still heard them playing as he and others struggled to get a collapsible lifeboat off the top of the roof of the officers quarters. The last night of the Titanic was the first time Steward Brown ever swam.

Some recalled hearing “Aughton,” also known as “He Leadeth Me,” which was written by Joseph Gilmore of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia in 1859:

He leadeth me, O blessed thought!

O words with heav’nly comfort fraught!

Whate’er I do, where’er I be

Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.

He leadeth me, He leadeth me,

By His own hand He leadeth me;

His faithful foll’wer I would be,

For by His hand He leadeth me.

Sometimes ’mid scenes of deepest gloom,

Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom,

By waters still, o’er troubled sea,

Still ’tis His hand that leadeth me.

Lord, I would place my hand in Thine,

Nor ever murmur nor repine;

Content, whatever lot I see,

Since ’tis my God that leadeth me.

By waters calm, or troubled sea,

Still ‘tis His hand that leadeth me.

E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee

Since God through Jordon leadeth me.

Eva Hart said there is no doubt that the band was playing. She insisted she heard them play “Nearer My God to Thee.

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