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Map showing location of Colne in the United Kingdom
Photograph of the memorial statue of Wallace Hartley the bandmaster of the Titanic in Colne, Lancashire

A memorial statue dedicated to the memory of Wallace Hartley, bandmaster of the Titanic, stands on Albert Road in his home town of Colne in Lancashire.

Titanic Remembered - remembrance sites in the United Kingdom and Ireland
Colne, Lancashire

The ship's orchestra - Theodore Brailey from London, Roger Bricoux from Lille in France, John Frederick Clarke from Liverpool, John Law Hume from Dumfries in Scotland, Belgian George Krins, Percy Cornelius Taylor from London, John Wesley Woodward from Headington, and bandmaster Wallace Hartley, from Dewsbury - embarked as second class passengers, although were employed through Messrs C W & F N Black of Liverpool. Wallace Henry Hartley was born on 2nd June 1878 and worked for the Cunard Line before taking up the post of bandmaster aboard the Titanic. He died at the age of thirty-three, leaving a fiancé.

On 24th May 1912 the "Titanic Band Memorial Concert" was held at the Albert Hall. Over 10,000 people attended, and seven "of the world's leading orchestras numbering together nearly 500 instrumentalists, combined to render a programme of classical music;...[the]...orchestra was the largest and most powerful that had ever appeared in the Albert Hall". Seven celebrated conductors led the massed orchestras, amongst them Sir Henry J. Wood and Sir Edward Elgar.

The body of Wallace Hartley was returned to England aboard the White Star Line's Arabic. His grave in Colne Cemetery is "In Loving Memory of Wallace Henry, the beloved son of Albion and Elizabeth Hartley, formerly of Colne, who lost his life in the S.S. Titanic disaster on April 15th 1912. Aged 33 years. And was interred on May 18th 1912". A crowd of 40,000 people gathered to pay their respects to Wallace Hartley. A statue erected in 1915 reads "Wallace Hartley, Bandmaster of R.M.S. Titanic, who perished in the foundering of that vessel, April 15th 1912. Erected by voluntary contributions to commemorate the heroism of a native of this town."


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