One of the young Irish survivors, Ellen Shine, would marry and move to northern Manhattan; her granddaughter, Christine C. Quinn, is now speaker of the City Council. Ms. Shine is quoted in several 1912 newspaper stories about the rough treatment of steerage passengers, but it appeared that the reporters took some liberties. One wrote that the young Miss Shine had spoken of third-class passengers being shot and thrown into the ocean, rather than permitted to board a lifeboat, and in another account, she is quoted saying that those same passengers were simply forced away, according to a recent article in Irish America magazine by Maureen Murphy of Hofstra University.

That demonstrates the power of those Senate hearings at the Waldorf, which quickly got people to tell their recollections and stories under oath, with all the tatters of human memory flapping in the breezes of history. The transcripts of those hearings were edited by Tom Kuntz, an editor at The New York Times, and published in 1998 by Pocket Books.

They are compelling, first-person narratives. In them, you can learn of the heroic work of the Titanic’s wireless operator, who stayed at his post until the end, flashing S O S messages, and of the epic moment of devotion when Ida Straus refused to stay in a lifeboat without her husband, Isidor, and the cruelties of class rigors, which meant death for the poor.

And those hearings also established that the Titanic had set sail with space on its lifeboats for only a third of the people on board and that there had been no drills on how to evacuate.

The outcropping of that history is present in modern life. Just think of the instructions that flight attendants give on every passenger airline flight, in every language: your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device; follow the lighted path to the exits; there are two emergency doors over the wings. But the blame for the policy that only credit cards will be accepted for cocktails cannot be laid with the Titanic.