Greetings!
After taking some time to meditate on this topic, some observations come to mind.
I remember asking a question related to this topic over a year ago, specifically, "what happened to the people Mr. Hart escorted to Boat 8?" Now Mr. Gleicher has addressed these and other concerns about Mr. Hart's role in the disaster. I can't say I was happy to read his conclusions (I doubt he was happy to learn them), but the evidence may be inescapable. There just doesn't seem to be corroborating evidence for Mr. Hart leading two groups from third class to the boat deck.
Actually, as
Walter Lord noted in ANTR, even the most conservative estimates of those saved in the lifeboats counted far more women and children, and far fewer men, than were actually saved. It seems most everyone was prone to exaggeration about that night.
Could Mr. Hart perhaps have suffered from the same syndrome? Could a small group of five or ten passengers have been improved upon, until it became two groups of 30 and 28? Everyone else seems to have "missed" the large numbers of men (both crew and passengers) in the aft starboard boats; might Mr. Hart have similarly downplayed the number of men in his groups (or group)?
There still remains Elin Hakkurainian's account, as quoted by Judith Geller in "Women and Children First". Mrs. Hakkurainian stated that she was encouraged by a steward to join a small group of women he was leading to the boat deck. Could this steward possibly have been Mr. Hart?
Also, Mrs. George Joseph Whabee remembered well- dressed men (perhaps
first class passengers, but perhaps also stewards in uniform?) leading her and others to the boat deck.
It seems that SOMEONE from the steward department did lead women and children from third class to the boats. If not Steward Hart, then whom? The name of Steward Denton Cox has been mentioned in the past; in fact, Mr. Hart mentioned him, but is there any corroborating evidence?
It's sad that more people weren't actively heroic on that night. Perhaps further research can locate someone (Steward Hart or otherwise) who truly was.