Strange, But Totally True!

It's strange, but true: a story eerily similar to the Titanic disaster was published fourteen years before the actual tragedy.

In the book Futility (first published in 1898), Morgan Robertson wrote about a massive British steel luxury liner named the Titan - the largest ship ever built, measuring 800 feet from stem to stern, according the fictitious account - that was deemed by its builders as "unsinkable" for its use of the latest ship-building technology: nineteen water-tight compartments. Because the fabricated ship was considered an unstoppable human triumph of ingenuity and invention, the ship carried far too few lifeboats (only 24, which was only enough for 500 of the literary vessel's 3000 passengers.) The Titan was traversing through the North Atlantic in April, traveling at 25 knots, when it collided with a iceberg on its Starboard side near midnight. The novel states the wreck of the Titan was to be the worst nautical disaster in history - a large portion of its passengers (2,987 people) drowning and dying of hypothermia in the cold Atlantic waters.

The Titanic was the largest luxury liner constructed to that point in history. The British steel ship measured 882.5 feet from stem to stern. It was deemed "unsinkable" by its builders due to the use of the latest ship-building technology: sixteen water-tight compartments that would allow the ship to remain afloat even if several of these compartments became flooded. Because the ship was believed to be the safest vessel of its day, there were far too few lifeboats aboard (only 20 for it's 2,228 passengers.) The Titanic was traversing through the North Atlantic in April, traveling at 22.5 knots , when it collided with an iceberg on its Starboard side near midnight (11:40 PM, to be exact). The wreck of the Titanic is still considered the worst nautical disaster in history - a large portion of it's passengers (1,523 people) drowning and dying of hypothermia in the cold waters of the Atlantic.

Click here to read more about the Titanic disaster.

Click here to read about the similarities between the fictional Titan and the Titanic.

Click the photo above to read, or buy a copy of Futility.