Well, here goes.
First up, we have my work placing furniture in what will be the First Class Dining Saloon, largest room on the ship:
The flat brown rectangles will be tables, the grayish blue circles will be chairs, and the white poles will be columns.
The section of the room furthest from the camera (the starboard aft part of the room) needs to be reflected to the section of the room to the left (the starboard fore), and then the furniture can be reflected from starboard to port to finish the room. There were enough seats here for 554 first class passengers to dine! If you look to the left in the image, you will see a piano (with a keyboard that changes color when clicked to give the impression of a cover lowering over it).
Brace yourselves, because this is where things get heavy.
This piano was in the primary First Class dining room, but it wasn't played while people were dining. Instead, it played hymns (such as "Eternal Father, Strong to Save") during a nondenominational Divine Service every Sunday from 10:30 to 11:15 AM. On Titanic's maiden voyage, it just so happened that a lifeboat drill was scheduled to take place on Sunday, April 14, 1912. However, most likely because of the worship service, the decision was made to postpone the drill, perhaps until Monday.
That opportunity would never come, however, because Titanic sideswiped an iceberg (that probably weighed 300,000 tons) late during the night of Sunday, April 14, 1912, and had fully sunk well before the sun came up the following day.
Titanic had a lifeboat capacity of 1,178, but only approximately 700 people ended up in those boats. There was a lack of coordination on the part of the crew (on one side of the ship, the officer on hand had a policy of women and children
first, but if there were no more women on deck, he would begin letting men aboard; on the other side of the ship, however, the officer that was present had a policy of women and children
only. The captain wasn't seen very often during this time, but it's understandable, given that he most likely realized early on the magnitude of the situation before him, between the lifeboat/passenger figures and the nearest rescue ship several hours away.) as well as the passengers (people were very reluctant to climb into the boats, as many were confident that the ship would eventually settle and remain afloat; even during the final moments of the sinking, when all that was left at the surface of the water was the stern, there was a moment when it seemed to remain momentarily still, and some onlookers from the lifeboats had become convinced that it was going to stay there for the rest of the night!).
There is a definite irony in the idea that giving a church service priority probably killed roughly 400 people. This piano played during that service.
