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"I believe the painting was at an earlier [Carnegie] International," said Bruce Wolf, chairman of the club's art and library committee. "Andrew Mellon bought the painting, and he originally lent it to the Duquesne Club."

Mellon eventually gave "The Trumpeter" to the club. In a letter to Millet, Frick wrote to the artist, "The picture of yours ... is now in the Duquesne Club, over the mantelpiece, in the room where I take lunch every day ..."

Rich and famous

The fact that so many wealthy famous passengers -- including John Jacob Astor -- were aboard Titanic greatly enhanced its legend.

Lesser known is Lucian P. Smith (his first name is spelled "Lucien" in some accounts), the son of a Uniontown family whose fortunes were made in the Pennsylvania coal fields.

As the story goes, he was a student at West Virginia University when a classmate introduced him to Mary Eloise Hughes, then 18. The young woman, daughter of U.S. Rep. James A. Hughes of Huntington, W.Va., had just made her debut into society.

After a brief courtship, they married in early February and were living at a relative's house in Morgantown, W.Va., when they embarked on an Egyptian honeymoon. Their return was on the ill-fated ship.

Lucian was playing cards in one of Titanic's elegant parlors when his wife retired on the night of April 14.

Eloise, as she was known, testified a month later at a U.S. Senate inquiry into the disaster. Wearing white for mourning, she spoke of her husband entering the cabin when the ship stopped and "in a leisurely manner," explaining that Titanic had encountered an iceberg.

He asked her to dress warmly because all ladies had to go up to the lifeboats. When it came time to step into the boats, Eloise refused to go without Lucian.

According to her testimony, "He then said, 'I never expected to ask you to obey, but this one time you must ... the boat is thoroughly equipped and everyone on her will be saved.' I asked him if that was absolutely honest and he said, 'Yes' "

The boat was lowered and she never saw him again.

As cries rose into the cold night air, Eloise said she felt sorry for those left behind, "it not occurring to me for a moment that my husband and my friends were not saved."

A first-class cabin was offered to Eloise once aboard Carpathia -- coincidentally, by Wilkinburg's Hutchison and his wife. She was, after all, an expectant mother, though perhaps not realizing she was pregnant.

She gave birth to Lucian's baby in November.

For Eloise, life was full of drama. On board Carpathia, she met a fellow survivor named Robert Daniel, 29, the president of a banking company. They were married in 1914, and divorced nine years later. She would marry two more times.

Others with ties to Pittsburgh included:

--Prominent British journalist W.T. Stead, who was on his way to America for various speaking engagements, including one at the Carnegie Institute's Founder's Day here.

--Claire Bennett Karnes of Pittsburgh, wife of J. Frank Karnes. She was traveling with another married local woman, Mary Miller Corey. Mrs. Karnes, 28, and her husband had been living in India.

The former schoolteacher had not told her family back home that she was expecting the couple's first baby and was eager to surprise them. They were two of only 14 women from second class to die in the disaster, and their bodies were never recovered.

--Marion and Frederick Kenyon were listed as having residence in Pittsburgh as well as Connecticut. First-class passengers, Mrs. Kenyon was placed in a lifeboat and survived; her husband's body was never identified.

--Shortly after the death of his wife to tuberculosis, Escott Robert Phillips decided to follow his brother, William, to America from England. He and daughter, Alice Francis Phillips, 21, were second-class passengers on Titanic.

They planned to settle in New Brighton, where William owned a business.

Miss Phillips was placed in a lifeboat. "I saw my dear father for the last time in this world, and I almost felt I would have liked to die with him," she wrote to a school friend.

(See local accounts of others on Page E-5.)

The aftermath

In the days after the wreck, flags flew at half-staff in Pittsburgh and so began the parade of memorial services for victims, both local and afar. The Fricks were among the first to help establish a memorial fund for victims' families.

They also were instrumental in creating a memorial fountain on White House property to honor both Millet and fellow passenger Archibald Butt, the president's close adviser who also perished.

As Carpathia made its way toward New York, newspaper reporters plotted to access the survivors. Only relatives were to be admitted to the waiting area on Pier 54 of the west Manhattan docks.

Everyone had a Titanic story to tell, but true to the Edwardian sensibilities of the day, most of those involved passengers in first and second class, which had the greatest number of survivors. Almost all on board were white, although there were reports of a Haitian family in second class.

According to Steven Biel's "Down With the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic," an April 27, 1912, editorial in the Pittsburgh Courier looked for the social, silver lining: "The Negroes who consider their poverty a curse may find consolation in the fact that they were not wealthy enough to take passage on the Titanic. Every adversity has its virtue."

In practical terms, the Titanic disaster had its greatest impact in the field of maritime safety. Eventually, ships were required to have sufficient lifeboats based on the number of passengers, not tonnage, and wireless stations had to be manned 24/7.

It's possible the enduring attraction of Titanic is its serving as metaphor, a symbol of man's hubris -- the ship ignores warnings and steams full ahead into danger. Such wonderful technology failed at just the wrong time, and so many people in the ruling upper classes were affected by the events of that cold night.

In the prologue to Robert Ballard's 1987 book, "The Discovery of the Titanic," author Walter Lord ("A Night to Remember") makes a strong case for the Titanic's enduring fascination:

"The thought occurs that the Titanic is the perfect example of something we can all relate to: the progression of almost any tragedy in our lives from initial disbelief to growing uneasiness to final, total awareness.

"We are all familiar with this sequence and we watch it unfold again and again on the Titanic -- always in slow motion."