Wallace Hartley

Wallace Hartley

Wallace Henry Hartley (born June 2, 1878 in Colne , † April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic ) was an English violinist and leader of the eight-member band on board the Titanic , which sank on April 15, 1912 after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

Life

Wallace Hartley comes from Colne in the county of Lancashire and later lived in Dewsbury in the county of West Yorkshire . In school he learned to play the violin. From 1909 he hired as a musician on the passenger ships of the Cunard Line , especially on the Mauretania . In 1912 Hartley was employed by the music agency CW & FN Black, which mediated musicians for the Cunard Line and the White Star Line . In the same year he was hired as head of the Titanic band .

Sinking of the Titanic

Monument honoring the musicians of the Titanic in Southampton

After the Titanic collided with the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912 and began to sink, Hartley and his band played to reassure passengers as the lifeboats were loaded . Many survivors later reported that the musicians held out until shortly before the doom. None of them survived.

There is speculation about the last piece played by the band. While some survivors thought they remembered the chant Closer, my God, to you , others mentioned the hymn Autumn , a song popular at the time.

Wallace Hartley's body (number 224) was recovered by the Mackay-Bennett about two weeks after the Titanic sank. The body was transferred to England on board the Arabic . One thousand people attended Hartley's funeral while 40,000 lined the path of the funeral procession. Wallace Hartley is buried in Colne, the town he was born in. A three-meter-high monument was erected in his honor, with a violin carved into the base. A memorial blue plaque was placed on his home in Dewsbury . In 2012 a seawater damaged violin was found, which after seven months of investigation was called the Hartleys, which he played on the night of the sinking. Allegedly Hartley had tied the instrument in a suitcase in front of his stomach and it could be recovered from the Atlantic with his corpse. The identification card that was put on after the corpse was recovered shows the clothes and objects that the deceased was wearing, but it did not include a violin and a suitcase. On October 18, 2013, Henry Aldridge & Son auctioned the violin Wallace allegedly played when the Titanic went down for £ 1,050,030 .

In the 1997 film adaptation of the Titanic , Hartley was played by Jonathan Evans-Jones .

swell

• Wallace Hartley in the Encyclopedia Titanica
• Stephen Spignesi: Titanic - The ship that never sank. Chronicle of a legend of the century. Goldmann-Verlag, ISBN 3-442-15068-X .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Titanic's volume titanic-titanic.com
2. ↑ Iconic Titanic Violin Estimated to Sell ( Memento of the original from October 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from October 18, 2013