And the Band Played On by Christopher Ward

grandmother. Both Tom and Jock were ‘loving and pleasant in their lives’ and he was glad that in their ‘sad, deplorable and tragic deaths’ they would not be divided.
    Bailie Hastie said that Tom had sent £1 home shortly before boarding the Titanic . Judge Macaulay added that Tom had been sending money home regularly and recommended that something should be done for the three children and their grandmother. Tom, he said, was ‘as heroic as anyone’ on the Titanic .
    Mr S. Charteries said that both Tom and his father had worked for him at Rosefield Mills. His father was an excellent and capable man and young Thomas, who had been a pattern weaver, had given up work only because his sight failed him. He was sure that ‘the working classes’ would rise to the occasion and heartily support the movement to erect a monument.
    Another speaker referred to ‘the admirable family life’ of the Mullins and Tom’s grandmother, Mrs Gunyeon. Tom had gone to sea after coming out of the infirmary, where nothing could be done to help his eyesight, but he had got on very well in his new career as a steward and promotion was likely.
    Provost Thomson moved that a memorial fund be established and ‘hoped very much indeed that it would be taken up heartily by the working classes’, as ‘their threepences and sixpences and shillings would be the best testimonial they could give’.

8
    A Bill for Your Dead Son’s Uniform
    30 April, George Street, Dumfries
    Fifteen days had passed since the Titanic foundered, yet there was still no formal confirmation that Jock was among the dead. According to the Dumfries & Galloway Standard , the Mackay-Bennett had been delayed by storms and would not now arrive back in Halifax until later that day. Having anxiously awaited its return, Andrew was now dreading it: as the ship carried only a cargo of corpses, he reasoned that it could only bring bad news; either Jock’s body would be on board, or it would not. Either way Jock was dead.
    Of the 2,209 passengers and crew, only 711 were known to have survived, most of them rescued by the Carpathia in the immediate aftermath of the sinking. They had been taken to New York, where they were now giving interviews to the world’s press. The stories they told – of the band bravely playing on as the ship went down – only deepened Andrew’s despair. A British teacher and journalist, Lawrence Beesley, who had been on board the Titanic and was among the survivors, wrote a dramatic account for the New York Times , which was republished at length in British newspapers on 30 April. It began: ‘Many brave things were done that night, but none more brave than by those few men playing minute after minute as the ship settled quietly lower and lower in the sea . . .’
    Andrew wondered if the fathers of the other bandsmen would feel a warm glow of pride when they read these words. He himself felt only intense irritation with Mr Beesley, whose observations on the death throes of the ship had been made from the safety of a lifeboat two miles away and whose scoop was already making him rich and famous.
    Andrew was also sick to death of well-meaning friends and acquaintances telling him how proud he should be of his hero son. Andrew did not want a hero son, even if it did make a good headline. He wanted a son who was alive. Why couldn’t people understand that?
    Several friends had referred in letters of sympathy to ‘Jock’s fine example’, a ridiculous cliché, thought Andrew, given that Jock’s example involved standing on the deck of a sinking ship in the middle of the North Atlantic playing a violin. Just how many people would aspire to that? It gave him no comfort to know that at least 100 people were keeping him and the children ‘in their thoughts’. For this reason Andrew had stopped opening letters several days ago, but he scrutinised envelopes looking for one with a Liverpool postmark which might contain information about Jock from the White Star