Titanic and Prophecy

"Similarities are chilling..both liners were “unsinkable”, both hit icebergs, both met with disaster in the month of April, and both ships were approximately 400 miles from Newfoundland traveling at over 20 knots."

The page reads:

“And with her keel cutting the ice like the steel runner of an iceboat, and her great weight resting on the starboard bilge, she rose out of the sea, higher and higher–until the propellers in the Stern were half exposed–then, meeting in easy, spiral rise in the ice under her port bow, she heeled, overbalanced, and crashed down on her side, to starboard.” 

The dramatic text continues:

“The holding down bolts of 12 boilers and 3 triple expansion engines, unintended to hold such weights from a perpendicular flooring, snapped, and down through a maze of ladders, gratings, and fore-and-aft bulkheads came these giant masses of steel and iron, puncturing the sides of the ship.” 

And further still:

“Amid the roar of escaping steam, and the bee like buzzing of nearly 3000 human voices, raised in agonized screams and calling from within the enclosed walls, and the whistling of air through hundreds of open dead lights is the water, entering the holes of the crushed and riven starboard side...”

This is not an excerpt from the New York Times or London Illustrated News in April of 1912, rather this text is quoted from Morgan Robertson’s novella “The Wreck of the Titan”, originally published as “Futility” in 1898, fourteen years before the Titanic’s fateful Maiden Voyage.  Other similarities are chilling, besides the very names being so close. Both liners were “unsinkable”, both hit icebergs, both met with disaster in the month of April, and both ships were approximately 400 miles from Newfoundland traveling at over 20 knots.

Published in 1976, Clive Cussler fans enjoyed further adventures of action hero Dirk Pitt in Cussler’s fantasy novel “Raise the Titanic”. Along with the subsequent film adaptation of the novel released in 1980, here was another uncanny precursor to actual events connected with Titanic. 


In “Raise the Titanic” a rare substance, byzanium, is needed for a major defense project. The only known quantity of this substance sank in the cargo holds of the RMS Titanic back in 1912. In order for his world saving mission to succeed, Pitt must locate Titanic and find a way to access the byzanium.  Pitt and his team locate the sunken wreck using deep-sea submersibles, sonar and other technology that would foreshadow the stunning real life efforts of Bob Ballard in 1985. Ballard discovered the debris field surrounding Titanic and then found the remains of the great White Star liner herself on the bottom of the Atlantic.  In Cussler’s version, Titanic’s hull was intact and was brought to the surface,  Perhaps Ballard may have been inspired by this written and cinematic fantasy to create reality, but nonetheless it’s a remarkable connection.

Without question, these works of fiction were created prior to the true events of history. Perhaps there is some sort of ethereal energy or connection with “the other side” where future visions were channeled into the minds of these authors to share a projection of what was to come.  Contemplate, for just a moment, what other works of contemporary fiction of disaster, innovation or modern development will prove true in the decades to come. It cannot be as simple as common logic, which would dictate these futures, for the details of both “The Wreck of the Titan” and “Raise the Titanic” are far too specific to real life events.