Titanic proportions

As most of the world cannot fail to have noticed, April 2012 brings with it the 100th year since the first and last voyage of the SS Titanic*. Southampton has a particularly strong connection with the liner, as it formally departed from its docks and sailed with a large number of local crew, and so to mark the auspicious date a new nautical-themed museum will open (which we'll cover later on), as well as various live commemorative events.  I'm going to be involved in one of these on Tuesday - but as before, more on that later.

By way of introduction, I decided to take a walk through the city centre and visit some of it's Titanic-related spots. The Titanic Passenger and Crew Memorial in the docks is normally off-limits to the public, but by a stroke of luck on Monday and Tuesday I'll be able to get in there for the rehearsal and concert and take a look. For now we will have to be content with the public memorials in the city, starting with one of the smallest but, for me, the most personally significant one.

The Titanic Musicians' Memorial isn't terribly obvious to the casual visitor, especially compared to the Highgate-Cemetery-level-of-grandiose Engineers' Monument a few yards away on East Park Terrace.  It's a small stone plaque on the wall of an otherwise unremarkable building occupied by a firm of solicitors whose employees may, in all probability, have never realised quite what it was, not least because the engraved text is rather small. In fairness, as originally planned they wouldn't have had cause to, as the plaque was inside a library on the site until London Road received the attention of the Luftwaffe in 1940.  The current replica was, disappointingly, only reinstated in 1990, but I suppose better late than never, especially as the mason responsible was a resident of Woolston. As illustrated by the photo below, the plaque is simple in design, with the names of the musicians surrounding an engraving.  I find the hand-made, almost child-like, quality of the piece highly poignant, particularly the central depiction of a kneeling figure - presumably Saint Cecilia - gently holding the ship back from the waves as if to allow the musicians a few final moments to finish playing 'Nearer my God to Thee', the melody of which is engraved below the image.  Bandleader Wallace Hartley, whose name sits at the head of this memorial, has his own individual monument in his hometown of Colne in Lancashire, as does Reginald Bricoux in Eastbourne.  As a musician myself I can't help feeling a great deal of affinity with the eight musicians of the Titanic, ordinary working men who when faced with certain death simply carried on doing what they did best, and arguably aided the survival of others in the process.

On a related matter, there is some doubt as to whether this hymn was in fact the last piece played by the band, and, even it was, which tune was used.  The famous scene in the James Cameron film uses the tune 'Bethany', as do Titanic films made in 1943 and 1953, however the British adaptation A Night To Remember did not.  This may simply be due to this tune being the most widely known in the United States and therefore the most obvious candidate to the producers.  Hartley, being British and a Methodist, would probably have known only the tunes 'Horbury' and 'Propior Deo' - and 'Horbury' is in fact the tune engraved on the memorial (I love the carver's detail in including a key signature of Eb and harmony notes). Two survivors who maintained that the last piece played was the 'Song of Autumn' may therefore have confused this waltz with the 3/4 metre of the hymn tune (or else heard a different group of musicians on the ship). Whatever the melody, there is little doubt that at least five of the musicians were still playing as the ship went down, until the angle of the deck made it impossible to continue.

The Titanic Engineers' Memorial is, as already mentioned, on a far grander scale and in a far more prominent location, opposite the Cenotaph. When I crossed the road from the Musicians' Memorial there was a moderately-sized group of visitors who had just got off a bus and were being given what was obviously part of a tour by some costumed guides.  A bronze angel sits over a columned screen on which the names of the lost are recorded, all on a double plinth above the road level.  I suppose it's only fair that a greater number of men who arguably provided a greater aid to survival (light and power as opposed to morale) get the larger memorial, and one which reflects the more physical nature of their work.  100,00 people are said to have attended its unveiling in 1914.

Titanic Engineers' Memorial

Travelling down the Above Bar St (i.e. 'above the Bargate', the still-extant northern gate to the medieval city) the next memorial is dedicated to the crew - especially the firemen and stewards - and lies inside the ruined church of Holy Rood, also a victim of bombing in 1940. It was originally built funded by public subscriptions on Southampton Common but was moved inside the church in 1973, partly to protect it from vandalism and partly to re-enforce the church's status as a memorial to the Merchant Navy. A plaque to the post office staff on the ship remains in the High St Post Office, but being late on a bank holiday I didn't get a chance to get a look at this one.

Reaching the waterfront (a spot I walked past on the Solent Way last time) the last spot of Titanic significance on this tour is Canute Chambers. A modern passer-by might note the Victorian style of the building, but without any trace of the company today they would be forgiven for missing that this, in 1912, was the headquarters of the White Star Line. It was here that anxious relatives crowded outside for days after 15th April waiting for news of the survivors and lost. The company hung large white sheets on the railings on which were written long lists of individuals, including separate lists of misspelt names, an occurrence which would be almost amusing if it were not so tragic.


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It was by pure luck that I walked back through East Park and spotted what had been spray-painted on the central pathway and the grass around it. It took a few seconds to work out what the white lines made up - it's more obvious from the north end - but the eye-shaped ellipses in threes on either side turned out to be the giveaway. Whoever had gone round with the spray-can had clearly had a pretty good knowledge of the ship, as they'd marked the position of the keel sections, the lifeboats, funnels, staircases and even Captain Smith's cabin.

 An American couple stood and admired the giant 'blueprints' as I took pictures as best I could. We both were surprised by just how massive the ship was (something it's rather difficult to convey photographically from a static ground-level viewpoint) even by modern standards, and this piece of temporary art was an excellent way of demonstrating this up-close.

And yet...despite all this it still seems like the city is ignoring this particularly significant part of its heritage. I don't mean that the majority of residents will associate the mention of the ship's name with a fictitious love affair on the cinema screen (now in 3D, I notice) rather than the extraordinary proportions of either the ship or the loss of life, but more that the city's acknowledgement of any kind of history is a mess.  Most people are ignorant of the existence of these memorials because they're tucked away, and not even in the way that lets you feel as if you've stumbled upon a hidden treasure.  There is no proper focus to the past: the old town and its walls, which should be meticulously preserved in as close a condition to medieval times as practical, are occupied by crumbling structures and encroached by a faceless giant shopping mall and derelict land. The docks are a particularly sad case; the public excluded, characterful buildings razed to make way for plastic-y corporate offices or generic apartments or yet more endless avenues of containers. I'm not opposed to the fact it's still a working port instead of a tourist attraction, but the half-hearted attempt at concealing the waterfront means that it manages to be an eyesore without also having the interestingness of it being open enough to observe what's going on, and appreciate what drives the town's industry.  Neither is this an attack on corporatism - Southampton owed its status in 1912 precisely to the success of large firms such as White Star and Cunard.  In return they gave it prosperity and civic architecture and an identity. I hope, and I hope not in vain, that the new museum will be at least a small step toward putting right all that is wrong with the town. It could be a fine city where heritage is able to compliment modernity and a civic identity is forged from the needs of commerce and of aesthetics. For now, however, it isn't, and until then it will never be as memorable or significant a place as in 1912.

Anyway, to finish on a positive note, we should at least be thankful that there are a number of commemorative events taking place in the current month, and that your author will not only be playing a prominent role in one in the coming days but intends to give a worthy blog entry about it.  There will be Vaughan Williams...

*Although often referred to as the RMS Titanic, the ship was never officially a Royal Mail Steamer so is correctly named as an ordinary steamship.