Titanic (2012 miniseries)
Titanic is a four-part television miniseries period drama written by Julian Fellowes based on the sinking of the RMS "Titanic", a passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, United Kingdom, to New York City, United States.
Sinking of the RMS Titanic
Part of the enduring folklore of the "Titanic" sinking is that the musicians played the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee" as the ship sank, but this appears to be dubious. The claim surfaced among the earliest reports of the sinking, and the hymn became so closely associated with the "Titanic" disaster that its opening bars were carved on the grave monument of "Titanic"s bandmaster, Wallace Hartley, one of those who perished. Violet Jessop said in her 1934 account of the disaster that she had heard the hymn being played. In contrast, Archibald Gracie emphatically denied it in his own account, written soon after the sinking, and Radio Operator Harold Bride said that he had heard the band playing ragtime, then "Autumn", by which he may have meant Archibald Joyce's then-popular waltz "Songe d'Automne" (Autumn Dream). George Orrell, the bandmaster of the rescue ship, "Carpathia", who spoke with survivors, related: "The ship's band in any emergency is expected to play to calm the passengers. After "Titanic" struck the iceberg the band began to play bright music, dance music, comic songs – anything that would prevent the passengers from becoming panic-stricken ... various awe-stricken passengers began to think of the death that faced them and asked the bandmaster to play hymns. The one which appealed to all was 'Nearer My God to Thee'." According to Gracie, who was near the band until that section of deck went under, the tunes played by the band were "cheerful" but he didn't recognise any of them, claiming that if they had played 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' as claimed in the newspaper "I assuredly should have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death to us all and one likely to create panic." Several survivors who were among the last to leave the ship claimed that the band continued playing until the slope of the deck became too steep for them to stand, Gracie claimed that the band stopped playing at least 30 minutes before the vessel sank. Several witnesses support this account including A. H. Barkworth, a first-class passenger who testified: "I do not wish to detract from the bravery of anybody, but I might mention that when I first came on deck the band was playing a waltz. The next time I passed where the band was stationed, the members had thrown down their instruments and were not to be seen."