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

The arrival of Wallace Hartley’s body became a focal point of national grief. This young man not only represented all who had died on the Titanic, but also the values that the British feared were in decline.

It wasn’t hard for people to see the Titanic as a metaphor for Western civilization’s obsessions with speed, wealth, and conquest at the expense of contemplation, sharing and the well-being of one’s neighbor.

They kept it up until the very end. Only the engulfing ocean had power to drown them into silence.