Steve Turner Quotes

In the last moments of the great ship’s doom, when all was plainly lost, when braver and hardier men might almost have been excused for doing practically anything to save themselves, they stood responsive to their conductor’s baton and played a recessional tune.

I could hear the band playing a cheery sort of music. I don't like jazz music as a rule, but I was glad to hear it that night. I think it helped us all.

Despite the awfulness of what was happening, the backdrop was a scene of beauty: a clear sky, a bright moon, clearly visible stars, flat undisturbed water, and an immense liner blazing with pinholes of light.

They were brave and splendid, all the men. They died like brave men.

Not only had they behaved dutifully and without apparent concern for their own safety, but they also offered the hope that not all of the younger male generation were venial, lazy, proud, irreligious, inconsiderate, self-indulgent, weak-willed, and timorous.

The ship's orchestra of eight young men were standing knee deep in water playing.

As the screams in the water multiplied, another sound was heard, strong and clear at first, then fainter in the distance. It was the melody of the hymn “Nearer, My God, To Thee,” played by the string orchestra in the dining saloon.

No praise could be sufficient for those courageous musicians whom we left behind. They were heroes to a man.

The story of their gallantry came to epitomize a spirit of courage, duty and self-sacrifice.

In the whole history of the sea, there is little to equal the wonderful behavior of these humble players.

When everything on the ship was being turned upside down, the music remained the same. In the midst of mind-jarring abnormality, it was the one thing that retained its familiarity.

The image of the lighted ship sliding under the waves, while the band carried on regardless, captured the public’s imagination.

“If any glory at all attaches to the awful tragedy of the sea about which the world is still talking, it circles round the heads of these heroic bandsmen who played the mighty vessel to its doom

For those out on the water it provided a bizarre soundtrack to a sight that so many would only be able to describe as “like watching a moving picture.”

The final dive of the ship, as the bow lay submerged and the stern rose out of the water, was truly horrendous for all who witnessed it.