Bow – the front of a ship
Bowels – the interior parts of a ship
Capsize – when a boat turns over in the water
Dry dock – a vessel that can be flooded and drained of water, to be used for the construction or repair of ships
Emigrate – to leave your own country in order to live in another one
Gangplank – a short bridge or piece of wood used for walking onto and off of a ship
Gantry – a frame consisting of scaffolds
Hull – the frame or body of a boat or ship
Hypothermic – having a dangerously low body temperature
Immigrant – someone who comes from abroad to live permanently in a country
Inquiry – a study or investigation
Laborer – someone employed to do physical work
Morse code – a way of signaling that uses light or sound in a pattern of dots and dashes to represent letters
Organism – a living plant or animal
Prejudice – an unfair opinion about someone based on their race, religion, or other characteristic
Quartermaster – an officer on a ship in charge of signals or navigation
Steerage – accommodations in the lowest level of a ship near the steering machinery
Stern – the back of a ship
Steward – an employee on a ship who assists passengers
Telegraph – a device for sending messages over long distances
Tuberculosis – a highly contagious bacterial disease that usually affects the lungs
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Buckey, Sarah Masters. The Stolen Sapphire: A Samantha Mystery. Middleton, WI: American Girl Publishing, 2006.
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1908 – Construction of Olympic begins in December
1909 – Construction of Titanic begins in March
1911 – Olympic collides with another ship; Titanic’s maiden voyage delayed
1912, April 2 – Titanic leaves Belfast, Ireland, for overnight voyage to Southampton, England
1912, April 10
7:30 a.m. – Captain Smith boards Titanic with a full crew for her maiden voyage
9:30-11:30 a.m. – Second- and third-class passengers board the ship
11:30 a.m. – First-class passengers board and are escorted to their cabins
12:00 p.m. – Titanic leaves Southampton
1912, April 14
9:00 a.m. – Senior Operator Jack Phillips receives first message of the day warning of icebergs ahead
10:15 a.m. – Captain Smith is given his first iceberg warning
12:00 p.m. – Phillips receives a second iceberg warning from the ship Baltic
5:50 p.m. – Captain Smith makes the decision to change Titanic’s course
9:40 p.m. – Phillips receives fifth iceberg warning from the ship Mesaba, but doesn’t deliver it to the bridge or Captain Smith
10:00 p.m. – First Officer Murdoch takes over on the bridge
11:00 p.m. – Californian sends message to Titanic saying she has stopped for the night due to ice
11:39 p.m. – Lookout Frederick Fleet spots an iceberg
11:40 p.m. – Murdoch orders the engine room to stop; Titanic strikes an iceberg
1912, April 15
12:00 a.m. – Captain Smith orders a distress call for help
12:20 a.m. – Order given to start loading lifeboats with women and children
2:18 a.m. – Titanic’s lights go out and the ship breaks in two halves; the bow sinks
2:20 a.m. – The stern floats for a few minutes, then begins to sink
4:10 a.m. – The first lifeboat is picked up by Carpathia
1912 April 18 – Carpathia arrives in New York
1985 – An expedition led by Robert Ballard discovers the wreck site of Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean using an underwater robot named Argo
Emma Carlson Berne has written many juvenile, middle grade, and YA fiction and nonfiction books for young readers. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Read on for a sneak peek at the next book in the Real Stories From My Time series: The Underground Railroad.
Thousands of slaves took the risk of escaping on the Underground Railroad. Each one of them has a story.
In 1830, a slave named Josiah Henson decided to follow the North Star from Maryland to Canada, where he could live as a free man. But Josiah could not flee alone. He had a wife and four children. Josiah’s wife was overcome with terror at the idea of escaping. She was afraid that they would be hunted down by dogs, brought back to their master, and whipped to death. Josiah insisted, but his wife resisted. She cried; Josiah argued. At last, his wife agreed.
On a moonless night in September, Josiah strapped his two youngest children in a knapsack and the family quietly boarded a small boat to cross a river. When they reached the shore, Josiah prayed that their journey would be safe.
For weeks, the family walked miles and miles at night. Whenever they heard a sound—a wagon’s wheels, a dog baying at the moon—they hid. Soon, their food was all eaten. The children cried with hunger. Josiah bravely knocked on doors and asked for food. But the answer was always the same: No. Still, the family pressed on.
Josiah and his family hiked through the forest over fallen logs and branches, up and down steep ravines, and across fast-moving streams. At times they hea
rd wolves howling nearby, but they remained brave. Once, a kind person gave the family a ride in a wagon. Another gave them passage on a boat.
At last, Josiah’s family reached Canada. Josiah threw himself on the ground and kissed the sand. “I’m free!” he shouted. But this wouldn’t be Josiah’s last dangerous journey. Over his lifetime, Josiah helped approximately two hundred slaves find their way to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
The Underground Railroad did not run under the ground. It wasn’t even a real railroad, with train cars and tracks, although there were passengers. The Underground Railroad was a series of routes and hiding places that slaves took to reach freedom.
The white lines and arrows on this map show the routes people took to escape from slavery in the South to freedom in the North
No one really knows where the name “Underground Railroad” came from. One story was about a slave named Tice Davids, who escaped from Kentucky and swam across the Ohio River to freedom in Ohio. When Davids’s owner discovered he was gone, he said that his slave “must have gone off on an underground railroad.” Another story says that slave hunters in Pennsylvania came up with the name. And yet another story tells about a slave who claimed he was making his way north, where “the railroad ran underground all the way to Boston.”
Slaves desperately sought freedom and they would try to escape their harsh lives any way they could. Some walked hundreds and hundreds of miles. Others traveled by boat. Some were smuggled in a train or wagon. Most traveled at night so as not to be seen and caught.
The road to freedom was dangerous. If slaves were caught, they would be sent back to their master and punished. The punishments were horrible. But to many slaves it was worth the risk, for at the end of the road was a light—a light called freedom.
The fictional story of Addy Walker started in 1864, when Addy was nine years old. Addy; her older brother, Sam; her baby sister, Esther; and her parents were enslaved on a plantation in North Carolina. The Walkers lived in a tiny windowless cabin. They had hard lives in slavery. But they were together, and their love for each other gave them strength. Then the worst happened—Addy’s family was torn apart, as enslaved families often were, when Sam and Poppa were sold to a different owner. Addy’s family was divided, just as the nation was divided, North against South, by the Civil War.
Although Addy is a fictional character, her story will help you imagine what it was like to escape slavery on the Underground Railroad.
“The night is real hot and I’m sweating. On my pallet, I try hard not to move—I don’t want to bother my brother, Sam, who’s sleeping at my feet, or baby Esther at my side. Flies buzz in my ears. I can hear more buzzing—a different kind. Momma and Poppa whispering. I want to hear what they’re sayin’, but I know I best keep still and pretend I’m asleep.
“Poppa get up and walk ’cross the dirt floor. He tell Momma we need to run away from Master Stevens’s plantation. Poppa say the time is right to take our freedom. He wants us to run to the North. But Momma don’t want to go.
“Then Poppa say Uncle Solomon tell him of railroad tracks near ten miles up the road. Uncle Solomon say we should follow them north till they cross another set of tracks. Where they cross, look for a house with red shutters. That’s a safe house. An old white woman live there, name Miss Caroline, and she gonna help us.
“I’m scared as I listen to Poppa talk. Almost too scared to breathe. Was we really going to run away and take a train north to freedom? I never seen a train, but I want to. I’m scared, but I’m ready for my family to live free.”
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Special thanks to Bill Wormstedt
Photos ©: back cover: ullstein bild/The Granger Collection; front matter: Patrick Frilet/age fotostock; Chapter 2: The Titanic Collection/age footstock; Library of Congress; The Granger Collection; Phil Yeomans/REX/Shutterstock; Chapter 3: Library of Congress; Popperfoto/Getty Images; Everett Historical/Shutterstock; Ilpo Musto/REX/Shutterstock; UniversalImagesGroup/Getty Images; ullstein bild/The Granger Collection; Wikimedia; Chapter 4: The Titanic Collection/age footstock; Chapter 5: Library of Congress; Historia/REX/Shutterstock; Chapter 6: Library of Congress; United Archives/The Granger Collection; Chapter 7: Library of Congress; Chapter 8: Library of Congress; Chapter 9: Bettmann/Getty Images; Epilogue: Emory Kristof/Getty Images; Back matter: British Library/Robana/REX/Shutterstock.
Illustrated by Kelley McMorris
Book design by Suzanne M. LaGasa
© 2018 American Girl. All American Girl marks, Samantha™, Samantha Parkington™, Addy™, and Addy Walker™ are trademarks of American Girl. Used under license by Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Number: 2017049569
First printing 2018
e-ISBN 978-1-338-19987-1
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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