28. Several books had been written ‘foretelling’ the disaster – but even the spookiest of these can be chalked up to mere coincidence.
One popular urban myth about the sinking of the Titanic is that the tragedy was eerily foretold more than a decade before. Most famous of all, an American writer named Morgan Robertson wrote the novella Futility in 1898. That told the story of a ship called Titan that hit an iceberg while crossing the Atlantic. The story also sees large numbers of passengers dying due to a lack of lifeboats. To some, this was a spooky premonition. However, Robertson did tweak some parts of his book before re-publishing it in 1912 – plus three ships called Titania had been lost at sea in the 19th century, so perhaps the name of the fictional vessel isn’t so spooky after all.
