The Band That Played On Read Free

three years’ wages as a wireless operator. The Marconi office had already sent three messages to its own wireless room advising the operators to hold their stories until approached by the New York Times . The last of these, addressed to “Marconi Officer, the Carpathia and the Titanic ” and signed by American Marconi’s chief engineer Frederick Sammis, simply said: “Stop. Say nothing. Hold your story for dollars in four figures. Mr. Marconi agreeing. Will meet you at dock.” This was later assumed to be another reason for the Carpathia ’s media blackout. Even President Taft couldn’t get in touch to find out whether his trusted military aide Major Archibald Butt had survived. (He had not.)
    On the night of April 18, presumably unaware that the Carpathia was ahead of schedule, Marconi was at a party. Van Anda sent a messenger to fetch him down to Pier 54 to board the ship with Sammis and New York Times reporter Jim Speers. It was now around 11:30 and almost all the passengers had already disembarked. The copy would have to be ready for the printer within an hour if it was to make the first edition on April 19.
    When they got to the pier, police stopped them. The reporter, Speers, protested: “Sir, we are Mr. Marconi, his manager, and a New York Times reporter.” The officer pushed the Marconi engineer Sammis back, believing him to be the journalist in question, saying, “Mr. Marconi and his manager may pass through. The reporter can’t.” Speers and Marconi boarded, while Sammis had to remain behind the police line. The two men made their way to the wireless room where they found Bride still tapping out messages left for him by passengers. “That’s hardly worth sending now, boy,” said Marconi. Bride, his frostbitten feet still bandaged, looked up slowly and then recognized his distinguished employer.
    Bride’s story, which he poured out to Speers in a rambling monologue, was everything Van Anda had hoped it would be. He’d got out of bed on the night of April 14 to relieve the senior operator, Jack Phillips, only to find that the Titanic had been in a collision. He watched as Phillips calmly made contact with the Carpathia and the Olympic and saw Captain Smith’s dawning realization that the ship was beyond salvation.
    In a sensational comment, he revealed that a stoker (one of the men who stoked the ship’s furnaces with coal) had come into the Titanic ’s wireless room to steal Phillips’s life jacket. Bride attacked him. “I did my duty,” he said. “I hope I finished him. I don’t know. We left him on the cabin floor of the wireless room and he was not moving.” It was never clear from this or subsequent interviews whether Bride was claiming to have killed him or merely to have knocked him unconscious and left him to drown.
    Phillips died of exposure while in the water. Bride found the last remaining collapsible boat, but when it was pushed overboard, it landed upside down with him underneath it. Bride managed to swim away as sparks poured from one of the Titanic ’s funnels, and the ship finally disappeared from view. After some time in the water, he was given space on his original boat, which had since been righted.
    Bride gave a detailed account of how the ship’s band had carried on playing throughout the sinking. The matter-of-fact way he told the story gave it added poignancy: “From aft came the tunes of the band,” he said. “It was a ragtime tune, I don’t know what. Then there was ‘Autumn.’ Phillips ran aft and that was the last I ever saw of him alive.”
    His description of the ship’s final moments suggested that the musicians didn’t even attempt to escape in a lifeboat. “The ship was gradually turning on her nose—just like a duck does that goes down for a dive. I had only one thing on my mind—to get away from the suction. The band was still playing. I guess all of the band went down. They were playing ‘Autumn’ then. I swam with all my might. I suppose I