Wallace studied at Colne's Methodist day school, sang in Bethel's choir and learned to play the violin from a fellow congregation member.

After the Titanic hit an iceberg on the night of 14 April 1912 and began to sink, Hartley and his fellow band members started playing music to help keep the passengers calm as the crew loaded the lifeboats.

A newspaper at the time reported "the part played by the orchestra on board the Titanic in her last dreadful moments will rank among the noblest in the annals of heroism at sea."

Walter Lord's book A Night to Remember (1955) popularised wireless officer Harold Bride's account of hearing the song "Autumn".

Hartley's father Albion met the ship at Liverpool and brought his son's body back to his home town of Colne, Lancashire.

[3] Hartley is buried in the Keighley Road cemetery, Colne, where a 10 feet (3.0 m) high headstone, containing a carved violin at its base, was erected in his honour.

The people of Broken Hill were so moved by the bravery of the ship's bandsmen that within a few weeks they had launched a public appeal to create a memorial to them.

[12] Frederick Cayley Robinson's 1912 oil painting The Outward Bound shows a youth in a boat watching as Titanic leaves Southampton.

'[18] Further tests by a silver expert from the Gemmological Association of Great Britain confirmed that the plate on the base of the violin was original and that the metal engraving done on behalf of Maria Robinson was contemporary with those made in 1910.

The fine detail of the scan meant experts could examine the construction, interior and the glue holding the instrument together showing signs of possible restoration.

While researching the origins of the violin, the auctioneers Henry Aldridge & Son and Christian Tennyson-Ekeberg, biographer of Wallace Hartley and author of Nearer, Our God, to Thee: The Biography of the Titanic Bandmaster, discovered the transcript of a telegram sent to the Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia, Canada, dated 19 July 1912 in the diary of Hartley's grieving fiancée, Ms. Robinson, in which she stated: After Maria Robinson's death in 1939, her sister gave the violin to the Bridlington Salvation Army and told its leader, a Major Renwick, about the instrument's association with the Titanic.

It was sold by auction house Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, Wiltshire, England, on 19 October 2013 for £900,000 ($1.7 million US), as reported by BBC, NBC, and The Washington Post.

[24] The story of Wallace Hartley and his violin is also the inspiration behind the song "Titanically" written by Canadian singer/songwriter Heather Rankin and David Tyson, with a music video directed by American-Canadian filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald.