Children of the SS Atlantic

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Children of the SS Atlantic

by Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail
Nimbus Publishing, 2026
ISBN 9781774715253 (sc)
$22.95, 85 pp, ages 8 – 12
nimbus.ca

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Part of the Nimbus Compass series of non-fiction works, Children of the SS Atlantic: The Lives Lost to One of History’s Worst Maritime Disasters explores this little-known Canadian tragedy. Nova Scotian author Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail focuses on the younger passengers aboard the ship that sank just south of Halifax in April 1873. More than half of the nearly one thousand people on board this White Star Line steamship perished in the middle of the night due to a series of erroneous assumptions (for example, the crew believed Halifax harbour was dead ahead when actually it was some 20 kilometres north). The details of what life was like aboard have been teased out from secondary sources, websites, and archaeological investigations, and young readers will discover what food was eaten, how people of different classes slept, interacted with others, and entertained themselves on an exceptionally stormy nineteenth-century trans-Atlantic voyage. Metcalfe-Chenail has done an admirable job recreating the experience of the younger passengers, although many key details are missing, since only one of the more than 100 youngsters onboard—John Hanley—survived to tell the tale.

Classroom Connections: This full-colour text includes an author’s note, dozens of contemporary illustrations, photographs, maps, a glossary, a list of sources, and an index. The author has provided a page of discussion questions for teachers, and the primary sources included (such as a ledger of food supplies as the ship set sail) could provide fodder for various classroom activities. Students could imagine themselves in various scenarios (young child versus teen, steerage or saloon-class) and write a fictional day-in-the-life account, or investigate the much more famous Titanic White Star disaster looking for similarities and differences.

Review by George Sheppard.