Thomas, I don't know if one aspect of this story would be appropriate for the kids but there is the one about William Mintram and his son-in-law Walter "Wally" Hurst (both were firemen).
Mintram had just spent several years in prison for manslaughter - during a drunken argument he had stabbed his wife to death - but by 1912 had served his sentence and was now back working as a ships fireman. His daughters husband Wally Hurst was also working aboard with him. According to Hurst, they both met shortly before the ship went down. Mintram was wearing a lifebelt, Hurst was not. Hurst was asked by his father-in-law if he could swim to which Hurst replied he could not and Mintram promptly tore off his lifebelt and gave it to his son-in-law. With the lifebelt keeping him afloat Wally Hurst swam to the upturned collapsible B and survived, William Mintram on the other hand was one of many who died and who's body was never recovered.
There was a crewman, his identity unknown, who gave third class passenger Minnie Coutts his own lifebelt and then gave her (and her two sons she was with) directions to the boat deck where they finally got into a boat. Just before she and her sons made for the boat deck, Coutts claimed that this crewmen asked her "would you please pray for me ?".
Whilst we are on the subject, there are a couple of what one might call "heroic myths" about the Titanic's sinking that do need to be debunked.
One such story is that of Captain Smith stoic on the deck at the end, commanding the crew through his megaphone "Be British boys, be British !". A journalistic invention and a damn silly one at that. There is some evidence that his last words were quite calmly delivered (to the men frantically trying to free collapsible A) and went along the lines of "Well boys, take care of the women and children and look out for yourselves." (the exact words differ with accounts but the sentiment was basically the same).
A second is the one about Benjamin Guggenheim and the now famous "We are dressed in our best and we are prepared to go down as gentlemen". That was either made up by a journalist or made up by Henry Etches (Guggenheim's bedroom steward) whose account has quite a few holes in it. The long and the short of it is that as famous a piece of "Titanic lore" as it is, it's highly unlikely that Guggenheim ever said such a thing.
A third is that of the engineers and electricians fate, although this one is a bit complex.
Contrary to what the press (particularly those throughout the British Empire) hammered on about at the time, these men were most definitely not still all down below, glued to their posts when the ship sank.
We know from the testimony of some surviving crewmen that a large group of men from the engineering department - firemen, trimmers, greasers and some engineers - were released from their duties by Chief Engineer Joseph Bell about an hour (or slightly less) before the ship sank. However, this is not proof that they were all released. There is an article on ET by Mr Senan Molony (using very selective evidence) arguing that every one of the engineers and electricians were on deck long before the ship sank - that I simply cannot agree with. For such complex, sensitive machinery such as the vital pumps and dynamos to be left completely unattended for about an hour or even more simply flies in the face of common sense.
After releasing the majority of their men, Joseph Bell and Chief Electrician Peter Sloan must surely have stayed below with the minimum amount of professionals required to staff the pumps and dynamos until Captain Smith released them all from their duties late on. Now, just before the end they where indeed all on deck.There were reports by some men (one of them was Wally Hurst who I mentioned earlier) that Bell himself was seen on deck just before the end came (with a plank of wood under his arm) and some even claimed to have come across Bell in the water.
So in conclusion it is a myth that every single one of the engineers and electricians were still at their posts right until the very end as the newspapers of the time would have us believe. Although it is probable that a handful of them were still at their posts until late on but still had time to make it up on deck.
There may have been a number of very inspiring and heartbreaking stories of heroism which were never recorded because the participants and witnesses to them all perished together.
