T Townsend

As an adventure story, it's well written, but the book contains numerous historical inaccuracies. It gives a very false picture of the class structure of the period, depicting First Class Anglo-Americans and 3rd Class Italian immigrants as social equals who were happy to hang out together. In reality, there would have been quite a lot of prejudices and social barriers preventing this kind of interaction. It also falsely describes the iceberg impact and sinking as violent events that were obviously alarming to passengers, and perpetuates the myth that "there weren't enough lifeboats." In this time period lifeboats were thought of only as ferries to get passengers from a damaged vessel to a rescue vessel and most of the boats were only partly filled due to passenger reluctance to board them until it was too late. The book's worst historical offense is the way it depicts members of the crew as violent, unprofessional, elitist, and cruel. Actual historical accounts have demonstrated that the crew of the Titanic were uncommonly professional and gallant, especially considering the circumstances. They did not intentionally block third class passengers from having access to upper decks during the sinking, nor did they pull guns on passengers, behave cruelly toward them, prevent children from boarding lifeboats, or manhandle passengers. If readers want to enjoy a well told adventure story, this book is just fine for that. But teachers should not present this as an accurate work of historical fiction as it has enough errors that the tale it presents should be considered as a distortion of history.