Historical Fiction Annotation

Author: David Dyer
Title: The Midnight Watch: a Novel of the Titanic and the Californian
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Date: 2016 (original)
Number of Pages: 323 (paperback)
Audiobook length: 11 hours 7 minutes
Geographical Setting: The Atlantic Ocean, the United States, England
Time Period: 1912-1959

Plot Summary:
            The Californian was the nearest ship to the Titanic on the night it struck an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic Ocean, yet the Californian did not come to the aid of the Titanic. Multiple crewmembers on board the Californian saw the white rockets the Titanic was sending up as a distress signal firsthand, but the captain made the decision to take no action. The Californian’s captain and crew learn the next morning that this was a terrible and tragic decision. John Steadman is a newspaper reporter who specializes in personal stories about the people who have passed away in newsworthy events, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and he intends to tell similar stories about the victims on the Titanic. However, his focus soon shifts to understanding what went wrong on the Californian that caused its lack of response on the night the Titanic sank. This novel follows the crewmembers of the Californian and John Steadman in the months following the sinking of the Titanic, as the crewmembers face scrutiny from both American and English officials for their lack of action and Steadman attempts to understand what led these men to do nothing on that fateful night, as well as to bring the stories of the Titanic’s third class passengers, overlooked by the media at large, to the public’s attention.

Subject Headings:
Titanic
Californian
Steamships
Newspaper reporters
Social class

Appeal:
The following appeal factors/characteristics of the Historical Fiction genre were retrieved from The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction (Third Edition) by Neal Wyatt and Joyce G. Saricks.

1.     “In these books readers discover a wealth of richly layered detail relating to the frame (geography, culture, society, customs, beliefs, and more) as well as interesting, believable characters and fully rendered events” (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019, p. 171).

            This book contains details related to historical events, culture, and society. The sinking of the Titanic is a well-known historical event and the book is tightly focused around this central event and its aftermath. However, details are also given that further contextualize the time period outside of this central event. For example, details demonstrate that this story takes place in a time when both horse-drawn modes of transportation and automobiles were in use side-by-side (Dyer, 2017, p. 28). Additionally, Steadman’s wife and daughter are Suffragettes (Dyer, 2017, pp. 136, 216) which provides more detail regarding the social shifts that were taking place at that time. The details of the story also paint a picture of a time when newspaper stories were critical and there was intense competition between reporters to get the story first (Dyer, 2017, pp. 105-108, 148-150), which provides insight into the news and media culture of the time. Additionally, the captain of the Californian laments the transition from sail to steam that has taken place (Dyer, 2017, p. 195), which further contextualizes the time period in terms of technology.

2.     “Novels may raise difficult social or moral issues through the plot” (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019, p. 170).

            The moral, ethical, and social implications of the Californian’s inaction are at the forefront of the storyline in this novel. One specific element of this that is addressed is the obligation that ship captains have to go to the aid of another ship displaying a distress signal (Dyer, 2017, pp. 157-160); one character explains it this way, “[i]t’s the law - but more than that, it’s a point of honour. No captain would risk the shame of not trying” (Dyer, 2017, p. 159). Additionally, Steadman, the newspaper reporter, is outraged that his boss wants him to tell a story of heroism about a first class man when Steadman is aware that, “[f]ifty-eight first-class men had found their way into the lifeboats but fifty-three third-class children had not. It was an almost perfect one-for-one correlation” (Dyer, 2017, p. 123). Steadman later brings the immorality of valuing the lives of first class passengers above those of third class passengers to the public’s attention through his story “Eight White Rockets,” which he says was published in several journals and the content of which actually serves as the final chapter of the novel (Dyer, 2017, p. 251).

3.     “To reassure readers, many writers append historical notes to their novels, thus establishing the accuracy of their interpretations and indicating areas in which liberties have been taken” (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019, p. 171)

            Dyer (2017) does include “A Note on the Writing of the Midnight Watch” at the end of the novel in which he explains that this novel contains both fact and fiction and outlines some examples of each (pp. 321-322). For example, he explains that the crewmembers of the Californian (whom this book is predominantly about) were all real people, but the other primary character (John Steadman) was not (Dyer, 2017, p. 321). Dyer (2017) further explains that in regard to the crewmembers, he “tried to offer authentic representations of them” (p. 321) but also used his imagination for some aspects of their characters (p. 321).

3 Relevant Fiction Works
The following three read-alikes were retrieved from NoveList Plus and were found in the Read-alikes section of the record for this book, The Midnight Watch: a Novel of the Titanic and the Californian (EBSCO Industries, Inc., 2020).
 

1.     The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott

2.     The Deep by Alma Katsu

3.     Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge

*All information about The Midnight Watch: a Novel of the Titanic and the Californian in this annotation came from these two editions of the novel:
1. Dyer, D. (2017). The Midnight Watch: a Novel of the Titanic and the Californian. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
2. Dyer, D. (2016). The Midnight Watch: a Novel of the Titanic and the Californian [audiobook]. n.p.: Macmillan Audio.

*The format for this annotation was adapted from Appendix A of the syllabus, which was from Saricks (Cataldi, n.d.).

Works Cited

Cataldi, E. (n.d.). SP20-IN-LIS-S524-22855 Syllabus. Retrieved from Canvas: https://iu.instructure.com/courses/1873760

Dyer, D. (2017). The Midnight Watch: a Novel of the Titanic and the Californian. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.

Dyer, D. (2016). The Midnight Watch: a Novel of the Titanic and the Californian [audiobook].   n.p.: Macmillan Audio.

EBSCO Industries, Inc. (2020). The midnight watch: a novel of the Titanic and the Californian. Retrieved from NoveList Plus: http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.ilibrary.org/novp/detail?vid=2&sid=acd048a5-ca2a-4c3d-8be0-0aff4158bd0a%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9bm92cC1saXZl#UI=10471176&db=neh

Wyatt, N., & Saricks, J. G. (2019). The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction (3rd ed.). Chicago: ALA Editions, An imprint of the American Library Association.