Titanic – Death on the Water, published in 2012, is a novel written by Tony Bradman and his son Tom Bradman. It’s a blend of fiction and fact about the sinking of the world-famous, “unsinkable” ship, Titanic. The main character Billy Fleming is fictional but the book is based on facts, so Billy and the story of him could have been real.
Billy is a 14-year-old Irish boy whose father, “Da”, has worked in the shipyard building the hull of Titanic. Billy is expected to follow in his Da’s footsteps, especially after the death of his Da. He’s scared but he decides to leave school and do what he’s expected to – start working on the shipyard for the wage that his family desperately needs for living. As it happens, they’re looking for bellboys to work on Titanic – that’s when Billy nerves himself and takes the job. So the adventure begins.
The story of Titanic is well-known by everyone, so it’s not hard for readers to guess what’s going to happen when Billy starts his job on the ship. Before reading the book, the only question you don’t have an answer to is whether Billy is going to survive or not. When I first started reading Death on the Water, getting that answer was the only thing I was looking for. But as the story went on, it swept me away with it’s realistic narration and it started to feel like I was on board myself with the characters – and the question, whether Billy will stay alive or not, wasn’t the only thing in my mind anymore.
Titanic – Death on the Water gave me a whole new point of view on the story of Titanic. As most of us, I had only seen the 1997 movie of Titanic and it had left me a certain image of the ship and what happened on it. This book, however, told the story from a point of view of a 14-year-old bellboy who wasn’t ready to face that kind of disaster, far away from home and with no one to rely on. It was eye-opening to think about the sinking from a different point of view than I, and most of us, had been used to.
The narration of the book was really gripping and its language was easy to understand. The book is only 130 pages so it doesn’t take long to read it – but in spite of the shortness of the story, it still makes an impression on the reader.