| When Sarah Flower Adams wrote the hymn, "Nearer, My God, To Thee" in 1840, she could not have dreamed that it would come to be associated, over 50 years later, with one of the greatest tragedies in maritime history. The story is well-known. As the R.M.S. Titanic, proud flagship of the British White Star Line, sank beneath the waves, having struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage, the ship's band is reported to have played the hymn "Nearer, my God, to Thee". The music and the singing by those still left on board was heard by the survivors in life-boats until all sounds died away, and the great ship disappeared beneath the waves. More than 1500 passengers and crew went down with the ship including the eight members of the band; but among the survivors there were a few who remembered the music and the singing of the hymn in those last tragic minutes. So runs the story to this day; and in England it is still, half-a-century later, the accepted version of the courageous part played by the ship's band. In his book "Famous Shipwrecks" (London, 1950), Frank Shaw wrote "The ship's orchestra, men not used to the ways of white water, men unimbued by the sea's stern traditions, and yet heroes one and all, coolly collecting their instruments. ..through the clamor of lowering boats and the wails of women and the crisp shouts of men, playing - playing, stimulating music, careless music -and then - when the imminence of death purged their souls of gaiety, coming together in that splendid hymn of appeal "Nearer, My God, To Thee". When Noel Coward's play "Cavalcade" was produced in London in 1931, the scene on board the "Titanic" was enacted to the sound in the background of this hymn
These brave musicians, led by Wallace Hartley, played minute by minute as the ship sank lower and lower by the bows. Their valor has become legendary, but their untimely deaths have fueled a debate .
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