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SUMMARY:
The setting is Liverpool during WWII. Jamie Monaghan and his friends make fun of the new Irish immigrant boy named Tom Bleeker. After he fights the best fighter in the whole school he wins acceptance and is called Bleeker just like his last name.

The Monaghans and the Bleekers live in the same row housing. Once the bombs begin to be dropped on Liverpool, Jamie's parents decide to send him away to Canada to safety. The Bleekers ask Mr. Monaghan to get their two children, Tom and Elsie, on the same government sponsored evacuee ship.
Jamie and Bleeker end up sharing a berth – tormenting each other turns to tolerating each other. Jamie begins to see that Tom has a softer side and that he was regularly hit by his drunken father.

Bleeker is convinced that he saw a German U-boat but no one believes him. The British destroyer escort leaves the convoy, a storm hits and then they are torpedoed. The ship is sinking, so everyone must evacuate the ship by manning and lowering the lifeboats. The weather conditions hampers a smooth evacuation and everyone from the crew, to the adult escorts to the children fight to survive.

Bleeker is thrown overboard when he tries to help others get into the lifeboat. The waves are breaking over Jamie's and Elsie's lifeboat as they wait and hope for a rescue operation.
Jamie wakes up in hospital to discover that Elsie made it, that Tom is in Intensive Care and that many of the evacuees didn't make it. Eventually, Jamie, Tom and Elsie return home and life returns to “normal” for them.

WHO WOULD LOVE THIS BOOK? A kid who...

likes war stories
enjoys adventure stories on the high seas
identifies with being a older sibling in charge of a younger one
loves fiction based in fact

WHAT ELSE?
The story is based on the true story of the sinking of the passenger liner City of Benares. Only 19 of the 100 government-sponsored evacuee children aboard the ship survived.
It’s won the 1997 Governor General Award Nominee for Literature Award, and the 1997 Geoffrey Bilson Ward Nominee for Historical Fiction. The references to physical abuse are not overdone, but be aware that this may be a sensitive issue for some readers.

Supplemental Non-fiction Resource: World War II Battles and Leaders