A new local book about the Titanic is hot off the press, but this time the story is being told from a very different perspective.
The authors of "A Ship Lost, A Story Remembered" are only 11 and 12 years old, and they launched the book at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax on Wednesday.
After five months of hard work, 12-year-old Jacob Burchell and his classmates are excited to see their name in print.
"It's really cool because I just saw a sort of rough copy of it put together, but it's cool to see the actual book all put together and finished," says Burchell.
The story is the combined effort of two Grade 6 classes from Sir Charles Tupper School. The project set out to create awareness of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and its connection to Halifax.
"Put that together with all of the writing workshops that we do, as well as research and development," says teacher Andrea Fader. "This is stuff that all of the students will need to know through their life and so we think it's extremely important that they learn the process."
Each student wrote their own page of the book and Burchell chose to write about passenger Jacob Alfred Johanssen after he visited the Titanic gravesites in the Fairview Lawn Cemetery.
"I saw his name on one of the gravestones and I was sort of curious about this other Jacob and I wanted to know more," says Burchell. "He was a very important person. He had quite a full life. He went over immigrated to the U.S. and prospected for gold in Alaska, and then he moved back to Finland with his wife and went onto the Titanic."
Fader says she is impressed with how the students took ownership of the book.
"The graphics of the book, they did the typing all themselves, they did all of the research," she says.
The 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic will take place Sunday, April 15.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Kayla Hounsell
