Question

Ann McGowan
Survivor of the Titanic Tragedy
1
At age 14, Ann McGowan told her family she was ready to follow the path of so many of her relatives from County Mayo and go to America. Mayo, once one of Ireland’s most densely populated counties, lost more than 100,000 people to starvation or disease by the early 1900s. The family agreed that Ann’s future would be better in America, and she would journey there aboard the Titanic on April 10, 1912.

2
Built in Belfast, the Titanic was lauded throughout Ireland. Tickets sold quickly; so many people wanted to cross the ocean on a ship that was unsinkable. In all, 2,228 people made the trip, although the Titanic’s lifeboats had room for only 1,200.

3
Just before midnight on April 15, 1912, Ann was returning to her berth from a party in the third-class general room. At about the same time, the Titanic was speeding through an ice field and collided with an iceberg, which sliced open the ship beneath the waterline. On the upper decks, senior ship officials were aware that the Titanic could stay afloat for only an hour or two longer. When the captain put out a distress call to nearby ships, they learned that the closest ship to answer the distress call was the Carpathia, four hours away. To avoid general panic, the captain instructed his officers not to spread word of their desperate situation, although the first- and second-class women and children were being loaded into lifeboats.

4
The third-class cabins were the first to take on water, so many of those passengers raced to the foot of the stairs that led to the upper decks. During normal times, locked gates kept third-class passengers from wandering around in the second- and first-class areas. As the Titanic sank, these same locked gates trapped them below. Chaos ensued when the stewards ran through the hallways telling everyone it was time to get up on deck, but officers at the gates told the people that the preparations were not complete and that they’d have to continue waiting below. A newspaper article in the Connaught Telegraph said that two men in third class “knew there was a ladder leading to the upper decks. Gathering the women and girls about them, they started for the ladder.” A group followed them, and another group formed that had also figured out how to get up from third class. By the time the captain ordered the gates to be unlocked, most of the life boats had already left, some of them virtually empty.

5
Ann was one of the lucky few third-class passengers to make it to the upper deck and into a lifeboat with about 40 women and children. One of Ann’s nieces, Mary Jane Dodge said, “We were always told she had a boyfriend, a sailor who she met on the boat. He supposedly threw her over the side into a lifeboat.” In an interview she gave toward the end of her life, Ann said that she was clothed only in a dress and shoes, and she couldn’t even take her purse. As the boat was lowered and rowed away, she watched the ship break in half, and the salt water and wind made her eyes start to bleed. The screams of the passengers left on the decks drifted over the water as the Titanic’s 705 survivors began steaming toward New York on the Carpathia. Ann McGowan eventually settled in Chicago, where she lived until she died in 1990 at the age of 92.

Select the TWO sentences that best show the author’s purpose.

A.
The author wants to tell the story of the Titanic through the lens of a third-class passenger who survived.

B.
The author wants to contrast Ann McGowan with those who had no personal connections to ship staff.

C.
The author wants to present a fairly complete biography of Ann McGowan.

D.
The author wants to describe the history of the Titanic and its passengers.

E.
The author wants to expose some of the problems of class that affected who survived the sinking.

Answer 1

A and E

- A: The passage focuses on Ann McGowan’s personal experience as a third-class passenger and survivor.
- E: It highlights class-based issues (locked gates, lifeboats loaded with first- and second-class women and children) that affected who survived.