April 14, 1912. "It was 11:45 at night according to ship's time when the Titanic grazed along the iceberg that would send it to the ocean bed" (p. 135). Only days later, after too little were saved and too many were released to watery graves, journalists and reporters picked up one of the few heartwarming incidents of the disaster: the band had played on. Even as the ship sank, as passengers and crew members ran in frantic craze, the musicians continued to play, ending with the comforting hymn, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." All eight musicians lost their lives as the Titanic sank, but their legacy continues even now, nearly one hundred years later.
Steve Turner, author of many other music related books like The Man Called Cash and Amazing Grace, explores the little information known about the eight musicians in his book The Band That Played On: The Extraordinary Story of the 8 Musicians Who Went Down with the Titanic. Accompanying each man's story are the interwoven details of the Titanic, forming a lovely biographical and historical tale that is sure to touch the hearts of readers.
I have always been fascinated by the story of the Titanic, reading books like Voyage on the Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady (one of the Dear America series, which I was pretty much hooked on as a tween) and watching movies like the 1953 and 1997 Titanic. Sadly I've never actually looked for any non-fictional source for my information, so I jumped at the opportunity to review The Band That Played On.
Author Steve Turner does a wonderful job of chronologically organizing events in the lives of the musicians - Wallace Hartley, John Wesley Woodward, Percy Cornelius Taylor, Georges Krins, Roger Bricoux, Fred Clark, William Brailey and John Law Hume - while adding necessary and interesting details about the time in which they lived. I especially enjoyed the black and white photos, included in each chapter, of newspaper headlines, musicians's head shots, and buildings that added to the reality of the story.
Turner also gives readers interesting information about the aftermath of the sinking, like how the families were affected and what steps were taken to officially honor the musicians. I especially enjoyed the last chapter, "'I Should Cling to My Old Violin,'" which takes a look at the mystery behind Wallace Hartley's violin, which was said to be recovered along with his body but never mentioned again in the public scene or in any family records . . . until a few years ago. It seems a perfect ending to a book that unveils so much of the mystery of the musicians's lives. The mystery of the Titanic lives on.
Because this is a historical non-fiction book, it is easy at times to feel bogged down in the immense details, but the overall story is well worth it. Of course I'm not likely to remember the date that so-and-so had his first real musician's gig, but I will remember the overwhelming assurance that even the lowly, the ordinary, and the unknown can impact an entire ship and even an entire world. And that is why I love this book so much. If ever there were a book that spoke so much of the ability of ordinary people to do something extraordinary, The Band That Played On is it. May the eight musicians who played on the Titanic never be forgotten.
"They kept it up to the very end. Only the engulfing ocean had power to drown them into silence. The band was playing 'Nearer, My God, to Thee.' I could hear it distinctly. The end was very close."
- Charlotte Collyer, Titanic survivor
Number of pages: 221 (excluding lengthy appendix and index)
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Source: review copy from BookSneeze
