The band on the Titanic stayed at their posts, and played as the ship went down. Heroes all.
Ah, but they were not White Star employees. The liner had contracted with another company to provide the musicians. After the sinking, that company billed the musicians’ families for the cost of the unreturned band uniforms.
How’s that for heartless?
(Public outcry forced the music company to back down.)
All 35 ship engineers were lost that night. They’d relived the men in boiler room 2, and continued shoveling coal into the last boilers working. It’s the reason the power stayed on so long while the ship was sinking. The ship broke apart at boiler room 2, which is visible in the new National Geographic program “Titanic: The Digital Resurrection” that I watched last night.