by Kate Messner
The sinking of the Titanic is one of the most famous disasters in history. I’d read about it when I was in school and thought I knew the story, but when I began my research for this book, I discovered that the details I’d heard were only the beginning.
Most people know about the passengers who lost their lives when the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, but few stop to think about the shipbuilders who died before it even set sail. Shipyards of the early 1900s were risky places to work. Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Ireland, was no exception.
Men worked from six in the morning to five thirty in the evening with two short breaks for breakfast and lunch. Conditions were loud, crowded, and dangerous. Falls were common. Men could be hit by cranes or crushed by falling plates. Wind could make the scaffolding collapse.
Harland and Wolff shipyard recorded 254 accidents while the Titanic was being built. Eight of those were fatal, like the accident that claimed the life of Patrick’s father in this story.
Today, the site of that shipyard is a world-class museum, dedicated to telling the story of the building and the sinking of the Titanic.
Construction of the Titanic began in late March of 1909. When it was finished two years later, it weighed 46,328 tons. The great ship was 882 feet long and 92 feet wide. The Titanic’s launch happened on May 31, 1911, with a hundred thousand people watching. But there were many jobs still to be done — painting, woodworking, bringing in furniture and supplies.
On April 2, 1912, the ship set sail on its maiden voyage. Like Patrick, a number of men who’d helped to build the ship were invited on that trip, in case there was last-minute work to be done along the way. After the Titanic left Belfast, it went through sea trials, a series of tests to make sure everything was working properly. Then, before crossing the Atlantic, it made three stops to pick up passengers — in Southampton, England; Cherbourg, France; and Queensland, Ireland. Those passengers came from many different countries. Some, like Patrick, were from Ireland. Others came from England, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. Hamad’s and Maryam’s characters in this book are based loosely on the stories of more than eighty Titanic passengers who came from villages in Lebanon. They were laborers, housekeepers, farmers, and families, hoping for a better life in America.
In addition to the Titanic’s human passengers, there were also animals on board when the ship set sail. The story of Jenny the cat is based on first-person accounts from people who remember seeing her on the ship and then leaving with her kittens when it docked in Southampton. Records show there were likely twelve dogs on board, too. Among them was at least one French bulldog being brought home by an American who’d been visiting Paris. Other canine passengers reportedly included a Pomeranian, a chow chow, a King Charles spaniel, and a lapdog named Frou-Frou. There was also an Airedale named Kitty, owned by the millionaire John Jacob Astor, and a Pekingese named Sun Yat-sen, after the president of China. Three of the smaller dogs survived by escaping in lifeboats with their owners.
The main characters in Ranger in Time: Disaster on the Titanic — Patrick, Hamad, and Maryam — are fictional, but they’re based on real passengers and crew members who were on board the ship. Some of the minor characters in this story were real people. Mr. Andrews, the ship designer Patrick watches through the big drawing room windows in chapter 1, is Thomas Andrews, who designed the Titanic. Andrews was on board the ship and died when it sank. According to survivors’ accounts, he really did toss steamer chairs overboard and run around the decks, urging people to get in the lifeboats.
The scene in chapter 10, where a man tells his wife, “Go, Lottie! Go and be brave! I’ll get a seat in another boat,” also features real passengers from the Titanic. “Lottie” was Charlotte Collyer, a second-class passenger who was traveling with her husband, Harvey, and her eight-year-old daughter, Marjorie. Charlotte and Marjorie survived, but Mr. Collyer never found that seat in another boat. He was one of more than 1,500 people who died when the Titanic sank. The timeline of events that led to the ship sinking in this story is also based on historical documents.
According to survivors’ accounts, there really were arguments in the lifeboats that night. Some people fought to go back to the ship to rescue those in the water. Others feared that so many desperate, frightened people would overwhelm the lifeboats and they’d capsize. So even though there was room in many of the lifeboats, few people were rescued after the ship went down.
Whether or not a passenger survived depended largely on who they were and how they were traveling. Men were ordered to let women and children board the lifeboats first, so only around 20 percent of the men on the Titanic survived, compared to about 74 percent of the women. First-class passengers were also more likely to survive. When the iceberg hit, crew members woke them up and brought them to the boat deck first. Third-class passengers had to wait. Many didn’t speak English, so they didn’t understand the warnings and directions. About 62 percent of the Titanic’s first-class passengers were rescued that night. Approximately 41 percent of its second-class passengers survived, compared to just around 25 percent of those traveling in third class.
Even those who were lucky enough to make it into lifeboats had to wait hours for the Carpathia, the ship that rescued the Titanic’s survivors, to arrive. Survivors climbed up rope ladders that were lowered into the lifeboats. Some of the children were reportedly brought up in cloth sacks. This display from the Titanic museum in Belfast shows some of the Titanic’s survivors in lifeboats and on board the Carpathia after they were rescued.
The lucky penny that Patrick gives Ranger was inspired by the real story of Thomas Millar, an assistant deck engineer on the Titanic. Millar had joined the crew of the big ship after his wife died, leaving him with two young sons to raise. Millar had hoped he could build a new life in New York, so he left his sons with an aunt and promised to send for them once he was settled in America. According to a story shared later by Millar’s grandson, and published in Titanic: Belfast’s Own by Stephen Cameron, Millar gave each boy two shiny, new 1912 pennies before he left on the trip. “They’re this year’s,” he said. “Don’t spend them until I get back.”
Millar was one of those who died when Titanic sank. His older son never spent his two pennies.
If you’d like to read more about the Titanic and about working dogs like Ranger, here are some books and websites you might find interesting:
DK Eyewitness Books: Titanic by Simon Adams (DK Eyewitness Books, 2014)
882 1/2 Amazing Answers to Your Questions about the Titanic by Hugh Brewster and Laurie Coulter (Scholastic Paperbacks, 1999)
I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912 by Lauren Tarshis (Scholastic, 2010)
Lost Liners: Titanic from PBS: www.pbs.org/lostliners/titanic.html
Remembering the Titanic from National Geographic Kids: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/history/a-titanic-anniversary/#TitanicInterior1.jpg
Sniffer Dogs: How Dogs (and Their Noses) Save the World by Nancy Castaldo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)
Titanic: Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson (Scholastic, 2012)
I’m most grateful to the staff and historians of Titanic Belfast, who answered my questions and pointed me to various resources in the museum. The following sources were also helpful:
Blair, William. Titanic: Behind the Legend. Belfast: National Museums Northern Ireland, 2012.
Cameron, Stephen. Titanic: Belfast’s Own. Newtownards, Northern Ireland: Colourpoint Books, 2011.
Elias, Leila Salloum. “Alien Passengers: Syrians Aboard the Titanic.” Jerusalem Quarterly Issue 52 (2013): 51-67, http://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/JQ-52-Salloum-Alien_Passengers_2.pdf
Hutchings, David F., and Richard de Kerbrech. RMS Titanic Owners’ Workshop Manual: An Insight into the Design, Engineering, Construction and History of the Most Famous Passenger Ship of All Time. Sparkford, Yeovil Somerset, UK: Haynes Publishing, 2014.
Lord, Walter. A Night to Remember: The Cla
ssic Account of the Final Hours of the Titanic. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1955.
Mayo, Jonathan. Titanic: Minute by Minute. London: Short Books, 2016.
O’Donnell, E. E. Father Browne’s Titanic Album: A Passenger’s Photographs and Personal Memoir. Dublin: Messenger Publications, 2011.
White, John D. T. The RMS Titanic Miscellany. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011.
Wilson, Andrew. Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
Kate Messner is the author of Breakout; The Seventh Wish; All the Answers; The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z., recipient of the E. B. White Read Aloud Award for Older Readers; Capture the Flag, a Crystal Kite Award winner; Over and Under the Snow, a New York Times Notable Children’s Book; and the Ranger in Time and Marty McGuire chapter book series. A former middle-school English teacher, Kate lives on Lake Champlain with her family and loves reading, walking in the woods, and traveling. Visit her online at katemessner.com.
It’s 1776 and the Revolutionary War is raging! Ranger’s new friend Isaac Pope is a young soldier in the Continental army. And when General George Washington needs a spy to cross into enemy territory, Isaac is chosen for the dangerous task. Now Ranger must keep Isaac safe and the Patriots’ plans undetected or the battle will surely be lost. Turn the page for a sneak peek!
Isaac Pope held the flat-bottomed boat steady while soldiers waded into the river and loaded supplies.
“Quickly!” an officer whispered through the pounding rain. “We must have every man across before dawn!”
Isaac nodded. The men were forbidden to speak. This mission had to be silent and secret. Anything else would mean disaster.
The boat sank lower in the water until Isaac signaled that it was full. He and the other sailors used poles to push off from shore.
Their task felt impossible: Ferry nine thousand troops across the mile-long stretch of river between Long Island and New York. Horses and supplies had to be moved, too. All before the sun came up and British troops realized the rebel soldiers were fleeing. Anyone left behind would be taken prisoner.
Isaac felt dizzy. He imagined the Redcoats waking at first light to find hundreds of Continental soldiers trapped in Brooklyn. Isaac’s ears still rang from the gunfire of the day before. He had crouched behind a stone wall, his heart pounding against the musket he held tight to his chest.
They’d fought bravely, but how long could they go on? George Washington’s troops were beaten down. They’d held out for two days against an army twice their size. But now they were surrounded.
Could they possibly escape before dawn?
Text copyright © 2019 by Kate Messner
Illustrations by Kelley McMorris, copyright © 2019 Scholastic Inc.
This book is being published simultaneously in hardcover by Scholastic Press.
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While inspired by real events and historical characters, this is a work of fiction and does not claim to be historically accurate or portray factual events or relationships. Please keep in mind that references to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales may not be factually accurate, but rather fictionalized by the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Messner, Kate, author. | McMorris, Kelley, illustrator. | Messner, Kate. Ranger in time ; 9.
Title: Disaster on the Titanic / Kate Messner ; illustrated by Kelley McMorris.
Description: New York : Scholastic Inc., 2019. | Series: Ranger in time ; 9 | Summary: This time the mysterious box transports the golden retriever Ranger back to the shipyards of Belfast in 1912, where a ship is being prepared for her maiden voyage, and when he saves young Patrick Murphy from being crushed by falling boards, Ranger expects to be transported home; when he is not, he knows that somehow his job is not finished — but then, Ranger has never heard of the Titanic, and knows nothing of the fate that awaits Patrick, and all the other people on board.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018013837
Subjects: LCSH: Titanic (Steamship) — Juvenile fiction. | Golden retriever — Juvenile fiction. | Time travel — Juvenile fiction. | Shipwrecks — North Atlantic Ocean — Juvenile fiction. | Adventure stories. | North Atlantic Ocean — Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Titanic (Steamship) — Fiction. | Golden retriever — Fiction. | Dogs — Fiction. | Time travel — Fiction. | Shipwrecks — Fiction. | Survival — Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers — Fiction. | LCGFT: Action and adventure fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ10.3.M5635 Di 2019 | DDC 813.6 [Fic] — dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013837
First printing 2019
COVER ART BY KELLEY MCMORRIS, © 2019 SCHOLASTIC INC.
COVER DESIGN BY ELLEN DUDA
e-ISBN 978-1-338-13400-1
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