We know this part of the story: On April 15, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, claiming the lives of 1500 passengers and crew. We've heard about the shortage of lifeboats and the heroic band that played on as the ship went down. What we didn't know was how The White Star Line sent a bill for the brass buttons on the uniform of one of the musicians to his family that hadn't yet been told officially of his death. When the family of the 21-year-old violinist Jock Hume asked if it would be possible to bring his body home to Scotland, they were told that normal cargo rates would apply — £25 to £30, a small fortune in those days for an ordinary family. Years later, Jock Hume's grandson Christopher Ward investigated the aftermath of the Titanic and the result was his book, And The Band Played On . In an interview, the author shares some of his findings. Excerpts.
Your bookAnd the Band Played Onbegins where the other stories end — with the sinking of the Titanic. At what point did you feel like discovering the aftermath of the Titanic and writing about it?
When the Titanic sank, 1,500 people were in the water. Half an hour later they were all dead. More than a thousand were never seen again. No one has told the full story of what happened to them. All of the books and the films end at the moment that the ship goes down, the last scene is either showing the stern of the ship with the words Liverpool, Titanic written on it and that's it. But, the truth is for many weeks after passenger liners crossing from America to Europe and back again, were passing the most distressing scenes in the water.
It is said that your book began as a family research project. Can you tell us about it?
My book is a combination of family recollections of my grandfather's life and death, and a historical, forensic account of the ‘sweeping up operation' to recover and identify the bodies.
When I got to the archives in Halifax, Nova Scotia where my grandfather Jock is buried and where other bodies that were recovered are buried, I realised this was a shocking story, which had never been told before. The White Star Line, which had behaved, in my view, recklessly towards its passengers and its crew sent out a ship from Halifax, Nova Scotia to look for the bodies two days after the ship sank.
It was a very painful experience for me because although I'd been to all these places, I retraced with the film crew the root and the process of what happened to my grandfather, Jock, who incidentally was my mother's father.
Death has not been a leveller. For the families of the bereaved, do the memories still bring back a sense of loss, injustice and lack of sensitivity on the part of the White Star Line?
It occurred to me that here was a story of class, of class prejudice; you would have thought that death would be a great leveller. But, in those Edwardian days, it wasn't. It just continued. A hundred years later, nobody's ever said sorry for what happened on the Titanic. There were two public inquiries and neither of them really revealed that anybody had done anything wrong.
The White Star Line had become a company that was self-serving. It had forgotten about its duty of care to its passengers. It was interested in building bigger ships, bigger corporate headquarters.
They (the bodies recovered after the Titanic sank) were taken by horse-drawn carriage to the Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax where all of the Titanic dead are buried except for those who were taken home by their families; people like Jacob Aster, the American millionaire, for instance. It was a story of class system being enforced as ruthlessly in death as it had been in life.
I discovered that first class passengers ended up in all the coffins. Third class passengers and members of the crew were either immediately buried over board with a short ceremony wrapped in canvas; or, in fortunately my grandfather's case, were brought and kept aboard the Mackay-Bennett ship. But, they were thrown onto ice in the hold.
How did your parents cope with the aftermath?
My grandfather Jock's pay was stopped at twenty past two in the morning, which was the moment the ship went down. Two weeks later, his father received a bill for the brass buttons on his uniform before the family had even been told officially that he was dead. When they did know, they asked if it would be possible to bring his body home to Scotland. They were told normal cargo rates would apply, which was an approximate amount of £25 to £30.
My mother was born six months after her father died. Her early childhood memories are, first of all, being pointed out in the street as Jock Hume's daughter. Because her family received money that helped them survive from the Titanic Relief Fund, she was also a charity's child. The Titanic cast a shadow right throughout her life.
(Discovery Channel will air two special programmes, Inside the Titanic and Titanic: The Aftermath, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Titanic's ill-fated maiden voyage. The programme will be telecast on April 14 and 15; 8 p.m.)
