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BELFAST, IRELAND - Writers of fiction are often asked one question over and over. “Where do you get your ideas from?” One famous writer jested that he found his best ideas in the bottom of a bottle of bourbon. Really while it may be a favorite inquiry to ask, the query is difficult to answer. Writing a story is a process. An over heard conversation may spark a line of thought, a trip to a different location may prove inspirational, but usually an idea takes time and thought to develop. For some the muse may be found in the bottom of a glass of scotch or in a healthy serving of chocolate, but who knows from what depth of the imagination the idea itself is conceived. The Story of the Titanic One writer who might have asked that question himself was Morgan Robertson. In 1898 Morgan wrote a novel that at the time was seen as so far-fetched as to not be believable. The novel detailed the harrowing tragedy of an ocean liner called the Titan. A Prediction of the End This huge fictional ship tempts fate and after striking an iceberg in the mid-Atlantic during its maiden voyage sinks with a tremendous loss of life due to a lack of life boats. Robertson’s book was not well received since to the public at the time the story seemed too fantastic to even be an entertaining read. |
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Comparisons Compare the novel to the now famous facts of a real ship disaster. In April 1912 the Titanic left Belfast, Ireland on her maiden voyage to New York. As Robertson had written fourteen years earlier the ship was huge in comparison to other ships at the time. The Titan, in Robertson novel was 70,000 tons to the real ship’s 66,000 and the number of passengers meant that less than half had room provided for them on the lifeboats. Racing through an ice field in the mid-Atlantic the ocean liner struck an iceberg and sank in just under two hours. Fifteen hundred people perished in the icy waters just as they had in the novel written in 1898. There was one big difference between the people on the Titanic and the fictional passengers on board the Titan; Titanic guests and crew had a warning. In the stateroom of the luxurious ship an officer had placed a book on the shelf of the library as a joke. The book was “Futility: The Wreck of the Titan” by Morgan Robertson.
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