fires in all four directors’ offices. ‘The offices look very business-like but I miss the cosiness of the old ones,’ she wrote in her diary.
By 1912, J. Bruce Ismay was in charge of the business. He had inherited his father’s petty meannesses, always taking a tram to the office and imposing his own values on others. One of his fellow directors, Colonel Henry Concanon, who liked to travel to work in the privacy of a dog cart, would get his groom to drop him off round the corner and walk the short distance down James Street so that he could be seen by Ismay to arrive at the office on foot.
When Andrew Hume arrived at the White Star Line building at 30 James Street just before midday, it looked like a temple under siege, the grandness of its architecture at variance with the humanity surrounding it. In the absence of any information from the company, distraught relatives and friends desperate for news of loved ones had decided, like Andrew, to tackle the White Star Line head on. They were ‘men and women of all classes of society’, as the Liverpool Post & Mercury described them in the following day’s paper. Some had been sleeping outside the building all night. Many of the women were in tears. Men were shaking their fists and demanding information. Among the crowd was the Revd Latimer Davies, vicar of St James, Toxteth, who had come to seek information about three parishioners who were crew members on the ship. A notice board on an easel had been placed on the pavement near the entrance, presumably to list names of survivors, but there was nothing written on it.
The entrance to the building was up five broad granite steps through two large wrought-iron gates. A porter’s lodge lay to the right, a man in White Star Line uniform positioned to intervene at the first sign of trouble. Inside the large entrance area, two large trestle tables had been hastily erected, one clearly marked ‘Passengers’, the other ‘Crew’. Although strictly ‘crew’ the Titanic musicians had been travelling as passengers on a Second Class ticket number 250654. Andrew therefore queued to make enquiries at both desks. At neither desk was he able to get any information about Jock or the band, other than assurances that as soon as there was any news, the White Star Line would be in touch.
Today, two oval plaques, erected by the City of Liverpool on either side of the entrance, are the only reminders to passers-by of the building’s history. One says, ‘Headquarters of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (White Star Line). Founded by T. H. Ismay 1869’. The other says, ‘Former White Star Building 1896–98, R. Norman Shaw, architect’.
There is no mention of the Titanic , which brought shame and infamy to the Ismays and the White Star Line and eventually led to their ruin.
From the White Star building, Andrew walked down the Strand to Brunswick Street, where he turned right and walked up to Castle Street. When he reached number 14 he climbed the spiral wrought-iron staircase through the atrium of the building until he reached the third floor, where an engraved glass panelled door announced the firm of C. W. & F. N. Black, Musical Agents.
Two years earlier, the two brothers, Charles and Frederick Black, had approached all the shipping lines with a proposal that they should be given an exclusive contract to supply and employ musicians for ships’ orchestras, relieving the shipping industry of the burden of negotiating individually with musicians whose ability they could not possibly be in a position to judge.
The Blacks promised to give the shipping lines ‘a better deal’, which they did immediately by cutting the wages of sea-going musicians, from the £6 10s per month they were currently being paid by the ships’ owners to £4 per month. At the same time, they withdrew the monthly ‘uniform allowance’ of 10s per month, making the musicians themselves responsible for their bandsmen’s tunics and the brass buttons
By 1912, J. Bruce Ismay was in charge of the business. He had inherited his father’s petty meannesses, always taking a tram to the office and imposing his own values on others. One of his fellow directors, Colonel Henry Concanon, who liked to travel to work in the privacy of a dog cart, would get his groom to drop him off round the corner and walk the short distance down James Street so that he could be seen by Ismay to arrive at the office on foot.
When Andrew Hume arrived at the White Star Line building at 30 James Street just before midday, it looked like a temple under siege, the grandness of its architecture at variance with the humanity surrounding it. In the absence of any information from the company, distraught relatives and friends desperate for news of loved ones had decided, like Andrew, to tackle the White Star Line head on. They were ‘men and women of all classes of society’, as the Liverpool Post & Mercury described them in the following day’s paper. Some had been sleeping outside the building all night. Many of the women were in tears. Men were shaking their fists and demanding information. Among the crowd was the Revd Latimer Davies, vicar of St James, Toxteth, who had come to seek information about three parishioners who were crew members on the ship. A notice board on an easel had been placed on the pavement near the entrance, presumably to list names of survivors, but there was nothing written on it.
The entrance to the building was up five broad granite steps through two large wrought-iron gates. A porter’s lodge lay to the right, a man in White Star Line uniform positioned to intervene at the first sign of trouble. Inside the large entrance area, two large trestle tables had been hastily erected, one clearly marked ‘Passengers’, the other ‘Crew’. Although strictly ‘crew’ the Titanic musicians had been travelling as passengers on a Second Class ticket number 250654. Andrew therefore queued to make enquiries at both desks. At neither desk was he able to get any information about Jock or the band, other than assurances that as soon as there was any news, the White Star Line would be in touch.
Today, two oval plaques, erected by the City of Liverpool on either side of the entrance, are the only reminders to passers-by of the building’s history. One says, ‘Headquarters of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (White Star Line). Founded by T. H. Ismay 1869’. The other says, ‘Former White Star Building 1896–98, R. Norman Shaw, architect’.
There is no mention of the Titanic , which brought shame and infamy to the Ismays and the White Star Line and eventually led to their ruin.
From the White Star building, Andrew walked down the Strand to Brunswick Street, where he turned right and walked up to Castle Street. When he reached number 14 he climbed the spiral wrought-iron staircase through the atrium of the building until he reached the third floor, where an engraved glass panelled door announced the firm of C. W. & F. N. Black, Musical Agents.
Two years earlier, the two brothers, Charles and Frederick Black, had approached all the shipping lines with a proposal that they should be given an exclusive contract to supply and employ musicians for ships’ orchestras, relieving the shipping industry of the burden of negotiating individually with musicians whose ability they could not possibly be in a position to judge.
The Blacks promised to give the shipping lines ‘a better deal’, which they did immediately by cutting the wages of sea-going musicians, from the £6 10s per month they were currently being paid by the ships’ owners to £4 per month. At the same time, they withdrew the monthly ‘uniform allowance’ of 10s per month, making the musicians themselves responsible for their bandsmen’s tunics and the brass buttons
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