BAND PLAYED ITS OWN DIRGE
The band had broken out in the strains of "Nearer, My God, to Thee," some minutes before Murdock lifted the revolver to his head, fired and toppled over on his face. Moody saw all this in a vision that filled his brain, while his ears drank in the tragic strain of the beautiful hymn that the band played as their own dirge, even to the moment when the waters sucked them down.
Wherever Murdock's eye swept the water in that instant, before he drew his revolver, it looked upon veritable seas of drowning men and women. From the decks there came to him the shrieks and groans of the caged and drowning, for whom all hope of escape was utterly vanished. He evidently never gave a thought to the possibility of saving himself, his mind freezing with the horrors he beheld and having room for just one central idea—swift extinction.
The strains of the hymn and the frantic cries of the dying blended in a symphony of sorrow.
Led by the green light, under the light of stars, the boats drew away, and the bow, then the quarter, then the stacks and last the stern of the marvel ship of a few days before passed beneath the waters. The great force of the ship's sinking was unaided by any violence of the elements, and the suction, not so great as had been feared, rocked but mildly the group of boats now a quarter of a mile distant from it.
Just before the Titanic disappeared from view men and women leaped from the stern. More than a hundred men, according to Colonel Gracie, jumped at the last. Gracie
As the vessel disappeared, the waves drowned the majestic
DEPTH OF OCEAN WHERE THE TITANIC WENT DOWN
[Description:
Rough diagram showing a cross-section of the Newfoundland coast and
the depth of the ocean where the Titanic sank.
]
The above etching shows a diagram of the ocean depths between the
shore of Newfoundland (shown at the top to the left, by the heavily shaded
part) to 800 miles out, where the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank. Over
the Great Bank of Newfoundland the greatest depth is about 35 fathoms, or
210 feet. Then there is a sudden drop to 105 fathoms, or 630 feet, and then
there is a falling away to 1650 fathoms or 9900 feet, then 2000 fathoms or
12,000 feet, and about where the Titanic sank 2760 fathoms or 16,560 feet.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
[Description:
Drawing of the steamship Carpathia.
]
CARPATHIA
The Cunard liner which brought the survivors of the Titanic to New York.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
[Description:
Photograph of Harold Bride being helped off the Carpathia by two other men.
]
THE HERO WIRELESS OPERATOR OF THE TITANIC
Photograph of Harold Bride, one of the two wireless operators on board
the Titanic, being carried ashore from the Steamship Carpathia by two
ship's officers. Bride, one of the last men to leave the ship, jumped
into the sea and floated around in the water until rescued. When taken
into a life-boat his feet were badly frost-bitten and became wedged
into the slats at the bottom of the lifeboat and were wrenched severely.
Although suffering great pain, he helped the wireless operator of the
Carpathia, Harold Thomas Catton, to send hundreds of wireless messages
ashore.
Following is the hymn:
Look with pity on my pain:
Hear a mournful, broken spirit
Prostrate at Thy feet complain;
Many are my foes, and mighty;
Strength to conquer I have none;
Nothing can uphold my goings
But Thy blessed Self alone.
Triumph over all my foes;
Turn to heavenly joy my mourning,
Turn to gladness all my woes;
Live or die, or work or suffer,
Let my weary soul abide,
In all changes whatsoever
Sure and steadfast by Thy side.
When my enemies I find,
Sin and guilt, and death and Satan,
All against my soul combined,
Hold me up in mighty waters,
Keep my eyes on things above,
Righteousness, divine Atonement,
Peace, and everlasting Love.
It was a little lame schoolmaster, Tyrtaeus, who aroused the Spartans by his poetry and led them to victory against the foe.
It was the musicians of the band of the Titanic—poor men, paid a few dollars a week—who played the music to keep up the courage of the souls aboard the sinking ship.
"The way the band kept playing was a noble thing," says the wireless operator. "I heard it first while we were working the wireless, when there was a rag-time tune for us, and the last I saw of the band, when I was floating, struggling in the icy water, it was still on deck, playing `Autumn.' How those brave fellows ever did it I cannot imagine."
Perhaps that music, made in the face of death, would not have satisfied the exacting critical sense. It may be that the chilled fingers faltered on the pistons of the cornet or at the valves of the French horn, that the time was irregular and that by an organ in a church, with a decorous congregation, the hymns they chose would have been better played and sung. But surely that music went up to God from the souls