The Brave Bandsmen - A Belgian Memorial

A movement has been started at Liege to commemorate, by a suitable and picturesque monument, the heroic behaviour of the band on board the Titanic. Of the eight members of the band, one, George Krins, was a young and most promising musician, born at Liege. He went through his course of studies at the Royal Conservatoire in the Belgian city, so vividly described in Walter Scott’s “Quentin Durward,” and gained the first prize for violin, with the highest distinction. Not being in wealthy circumstances, he was compelled for a livelihood to seek employment on board floating palaces, and, strange to say, made his first voyage as a member of the band on board the Carpathia.

In time George Krins would certainly have become a prominent and famous violinist, but it is not so much to celebrate the memory of his and his comrades great pluck on board the Titanic as to immortalize in stone or bronze the splendid part played by music in the Titanic tragedy, that the idea has occurred to raise a monument recalling how the ill-fated vessel foundered amidst the soothing or divinely inspired strains of a heroic band, forgetful of itself and its own safety, and intent upon making melody help everyone to die serenely or else to forget oncoming death in the enjoyment of caressing or inspiriting sounds.