882 ½ Amazing Answers to Your Questions About the Titanic

What happened to the great liner Titanic is a subject which still intrigues readers young and old more than 100 years after the tragic sinking of this 'unsinkable' ship. To feed that interest, Firefly Books has reissued a volume originally published in 1998 by Madison Press.

The 882 ½ questions mentioned in the title of this book have been grouped in a chronological sequence under headings such as “Building the Giant” and “Sailing Day”. Under “What Did Passengers do for Fun”, readers are told:

Children in first class could:
- Ride a mechanical horse or camel in the gymnasium or use
a stationary bicycle or rowing machine. The gymnasium
was reserved for children from 1:00 and 3:00 P.M. every day…
- Watch the passengers’ dogs being walked by a steward
every morning and afternoon on the poop deck

While

Children in third class:
- Played games on the poop deck. Frank Goldsmith remembered
swinging on the huge baggage cranes in the well deck and getting
his hands covered with oily grease. He and a group of friends
he met on board ran up and down stairs exploring every part of the
ship open to third-class children. They even looked down into
the boiler rooms and waved at the stokers shovelling coal.

Meanwhile, the adults were variously swimming or playing squash (in First class) or smoking and playing cards (in Third class). There is information about the music provided, both by paid musicians and by the passengers themselves in the lower decks, and descriptions of where passengers dined and what they ate. Many individual passengers are named and their backgrounds and circumstances outlined.

Tension builds as the night of 14 April, 1912 approaches. Readers are told how many life jackets there were on the ship and that icebergs were sighted by other ships in the area but that the warnings relayed were ignored by some of the Titanic crew. Questions and answers about the drama that led up to the sinking are followed by information about the rescue effort and the Senate inquiry in Washington, D.C., which followed. And what did happen to survivors and their families and to the pitifully few articles recovered from the site of the wreck?

Question 673: What did violinist Jock Hume’s family receive
from his employers after the disaster?
The Black Talent Agency sent them a bill for $3.50 to cover
the cost of his unpaid uniform.

Also included is a section on several of the expeditions that went in search of the Titanic’s wreckage, a search which ended in 1985 when Robert Ballard was successful at identifying and exploring the sunken hulk where he discovered it 645 kilometres east of Newfoundland.

The pictorial content of the book, which is laid out in the popular style of fact boxes, information in point form and captioned illustrations, includes photographs and drawings from the time, contemporaneous advertising and news copy, and artist Ken Marschall’s colour paintings.

There is a glossary and a bibliography, which includes websites, at the back of the volume, as well as a good index.

Co-author Hugh Brewster has written fiction and non-fiction about Canada’s role in World War II, as well as two other books about the Titanic (for adults, RMS Titanic: Gilded Lives on a Fatal Voyage, 2012; and Inside the Titanic, 1997, for younger readers). Laurie Coulter has also written several history books for children.

It is the personal detail about the passengers and crew members (Question 340: Were there any movie stars?; Question 483: Did any passengers refuse to enter the lifeboats?; Question 532: What happened to Captain Smith?) that sets this apart from other children's books about the Titanic. There is a lot to be learned about a notable historical event here, but, in addition, there is attention to the human side and the human scale of things that will make this a useful resource and an interesting read for school and public library collections that need a new or replacement copy of the book.

Oh, and the half question of the 882 1/2? It is “Will we always be fascinated by the story of the Titanic?”