There were 128 children , aged 14 or under , on Titanic ’ s only voyage . That ’ s not many passengers out of an estimated total of 2,240 . When the ship got into trouble , the officials allowed women and children to take most of the lifeboat places – there weren ’ t enough lifeboats to save all the passengers . Even so , 61 children died in the disaster . All apart from three of those children had been third class passengers .
The Titanic sank at 2.20am , watched by the survivors in the lifeboats . In the silence that followed , the survivors waited over an hour for help in the icy-cold night . A nearby ship , the Carpathia , eventually came to their rescue at 3.30am .
Imagine these small lifeboats , each carrying around 40 passengers , rowing up to a huge cruise ship . How would survivors get up the side of the boat , through the hatch and to safety ?
The adults climbed up wobbling rope ladders , but the children had one more frightening thing to do : each one was put into a sack , and the sacks were put into a net that was hoisted up onto the Carpathia .
A nEw lIfe
Many children on the Titanic were emigrating with their families to new lives in the USA or Canada . Because so few men were rescued , many of the surviving families arrived in New York City without a male loved one . Without
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The Andersson family boarded the Titanic at Southampton as third class passengers . They were all lost in the sinking .
FUN FACT TRUMPET
The youngest survivor of the Titanic was Millvina Dean , who was just nine weeks old at the time of the sinking . She didn ’ t know she had been on the Titanic until she was eight years old ! She was also the last living survivor .