THE news of this week's ceremony in Colne to name a street after Wallace Henry Hartley had me searching through the internet.

Hartley was the bandmaster on the Titanic who famously carried on playing as the ship went down. Colne born and bred, he is a true legend of marine folklore.

There are a huge number of sites devoted to the Titanic, not least because of James Cameron's brilliantly entertaining film of the same name.

But the best site I found about the ship itself and the disaster was the bewilderingly comprehensive Encyclopaedia Titanica.

This contains a huge amount of information about the ship, crew and passengers, including biographical information and the logs of what was found on the bodies when they were recovered from the sea. It makes moving and eerie reading:

"NO.224 - Male - Estimated age, 25 -- hair, brown

Clothing - Uniform (green facing); brown overcoat; black boots; green socks.

Effects - Gold fountain pen, 'W.H.H.'; diamond solitaire ring; silver cigarette case; letters; silver match box, marked 'W.H.H., from Collingson's staff. Leeds'; telegram to Hotley, Bandmaster 'Titanic'; nickel watch; gold chain; gold cigar holder; stud; scissors; 16s; 16 cents; coins." It is a superb site, developed and edited by Philip Hind, and from my online research seems to be generally regarded as the best resource for Titanic information on the Tri-W.

But does it have an answer for the eternal question: what tune did Hartley and the band play as the Titanic sank beneath the waves?

Here is the encyclopaedia's theory: "A final possibility is that as the ship went down Hartley alone picked up his violin to play one last tune. Perhaps even that which, it was reported by a former shipmate, he would have chosen to play if faced with death.

"That tune was Propier Deo the methodist setting to the hymn Nearer My God to Thee."

So now you know.

www.encyclopedia-titanica.org