The Wreck of the Titan
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About this ebook
In 1898, Morgan Robertson penned The Wreck of the Titan, a love story set aboard the Titan, the most advanced steamship of the age. When the “unsinkable” passenger liner hit an iceberg, nearly all its passengers perished at sea.
On April 15, 1912, the most advanced steamship of its age, the “unsinkable” Titanic, struck an iceberg and was lost to the ocean, becoming forever immortalized as a cultural touchstone.
The similarities between the fact of the Titanic and the fiction of the Titan are more than just name-deep. Both stories tell the tale of real humans faced with an unfathomable disaster, and the hopes of humankind at the turn of a new century.
As the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is remembered, Robertson’s work of fiction gives great insights into the human scope of the tragedy…and the enduring power of love.
Includes a special excerpt from the all-new Titanic thriller, The Titanic Secret, by Jack Steel—Available in stores and online now!
Morgan Robertson
Morgan Robertson (Oswego, 1861 - Atlantic City, 1915). Fue un oficial estadounidense de la marina mercante, además de escritor y posible inventor del periscopio. Popularmente es conocido como el hombre que escribió en 1898 la novela Futilidad o El hundimiento del Titán. Del mismo modo, escribió en 1914 la novela titulada Más allá del espectro, pronóstico de una futura guerra entre Estados Unidos y Japón, incluyendo un ataque furtivo de los japoneses. La historia coincide con el enfrentamiento de USA y Japón en la Segunda Guerra Mundial y el ataque a Pearl Harbor por parte de ese país asiático, hechos ocurridos años después de la publicación del libro. El 24 de marzo de 1915, Robertson fue encontrado muerto en su habitación en el hotel Alamac en Atlantic City, Nueva Jersey. Tenía 53 años de edad. Se cree que murió de una sobredosis de protiodide (yoduro de mercurio).
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Reviews for The Wreck of the Titan
53 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is evidence that time travel isXXX coincidences are a real thing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gutenberg edition includes another Novella, 'The Pirates' and two shorter pieces, 'Beyond the Spectrum' and 'In the Valley of the Shadow'. I found all four pieces very interesting. Beyond the Spectrum seems to describe lasers, and I found it hard to remember that this was written before WWI, as it seemed to fit the beginning of WWII. An amazing author!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Got it because of the story accompanying the actual book. As a Titanic afficionado, I had no idea. Quite a good story, with some very interesting elements. Smooth reading as well.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book has been called "a nineteenth-century prophecy" due to its striking similarities to the actual wreck of the Titanic, which occurred fourteen years after this story was published. I had been wanting to read this book for some time to see for myself the "prophetic" story of an 'unsinkable' liner named the Titan which struck an iceberg in the Atlantic one April, whose passengers perished due to a lack of lifeboats. This book wasn't exactly what I thought it'd be, probably since I had books like "A Night to Remember" in mind, where most of the action focused on the time immediately before and after the iceberg was struck. This story, on the other hand, wasted little time (a paragraph?) sinking the ship, and the rest of the book focused on the story of a survivor who beats the odds and rescues the small child of his former love interest.Despite not meeting my expectations, I actually really liked the story that did take place, as it was a story of personal survival and redemption for the protagonist, who showed a lot more character than I had taken him for initially.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Not very well written, if memory serves, but interesting in its historical juxtaposition to the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Like the Titanic, Robertson’s Titan is, prophetically, the largest ship of its day and is carrying some of the wealthiest people in the world when it strikes an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sinks with a great loss of life and property. Unlike Titanic, Titan is powered by steam and sail and some of the survivors seek refuge on the icebergs with, of all things, polar bears, again if memory serves. It’s just another one of those mysterious “happenings” and circumstances surrounding the Titanic’s loss, adding to the mythology surrounding it. A must have for Titanic buffs but not for much else.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Quite a famous story purely because, published in 1898 and featuring the collision of a luxury liner, the Titan, with an iceberg, it presaged the Titanic collision by 14 years. The similarities in terms of ship size, speed and lack of lifeboats are startling. Beyond this curiosity, however, it is a rather pedestrian story of nautical insurance fraud, an unlikely hero and improbable coincidences.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Since I heard about the short story that seemly predicted the sinking of the Titanic I wanted to read it. It's bizarre how close the ship details and the description of the sinking of the Titan and Titanic. If the Titanic had never sunk this would have been an interesting obscure short story published in 19th century. Nevertheless it is an entertaining short story on its own.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Been a long time since I read this book. I remember i bought it around 97or 98 when James Cameron's Titanic was out. This book was written only a few years before the actual Titanic Tragedy occurred. Same story - an unsinkable ship winds up sinking because of an iceberg in the north Atlantic with a bunch rich and poor folk on the ships maiden voyage.
Book preview
The Wreck of the Titan - Morgan Robertson
CHAPTER ONE
She was the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men. In her construction and maintenance were involved every science, profession, and trade known to civilization. On her bridge were officers, who, besides being the pick of the Royal Navy, had passed rigid examinations in all studies that pertained to the winds, tides, currents, and geography of the sea; they were not only seamen, but scientists. The same professional standard applied to the personnel of the engine-room, and the steward’s department was equal to that of a first-class hotel.
Two brass bands, two orchestras, and a theatrical company entertained the passengers during waking hours; a corps of physicians attended to the temporal, and a corps of chaplains to the spiritual, welfare of all on board, while a well-drilled fire-company soothed the fears of nervous ones and added to the general entertainment by daily practice with their apparatus.
From her lofty bridge ran hidden telegraph lines to the bow, stern engine-room, crow’s-nest on the foremast, and to all parts of the ship where work was done, each wire terminating in a marked dial with a movable indicator, containing in its scope every order and answer required in handling the massive hulk, either at the dock or at sea—which eliminated, to a great extent, the hoarse, nerve-racking shouts of officers and sailors.
From the bridge, engine-room, and a dozen places on her deck the ninety-two doors of nineteen water-tight compartments could be closed in half a minute by turning a lever. These doors would also close automatically in the presence of water. With nine compartments flooded the ship would still float, and as no known accident of the sea could possibly fill this many, the steamship Titan was considered practically unsinkable.
Built of steel throughout, and for passenger traffic only, she carried no combustible cargo to threaten her destruction by fire; and the immunity from the demand for cargo space had enabled her designers to discard the flat, kettle-bottom of cargo boats and give her the sharp dead-rise—or slant from the keel—of a steam yacht, and this improved her behavior in a seaway. She was eight hundred feet long, of seventy thousand tons’ displacement, seventy-five thousand horse-power, and on her trial trip had steamed at a rate of twenty-five knots an hour over the bottom, in the face of unconsidered winds, tides, and currents. In short, she was a floating city—containing within her steel walls all that tends to minimize the dangers and discomforts of the Atlantic voyage—all that makes life enjoyable.
Unsinkable—indestructible, she carried as few boats as would satisfy the laws. These, twenty-four in number, were securely covered and lashed down to their chocks on the upper deck, and if launched would hold five hundred people. She carried no useless, cumbersome life-rafts; but—because the law required it—each of the three thousand berths in the passengers’, officers’, and crew’s quarters contained a cork jacket, while about twenty circular life-buoys were strewn along the rails.
In view of her absolute superiority to other craft, a rule of navigation thoroughly believed in by some captains, but not yet openly followed, was announced by the steamship company to apply to the Titan: She would steam at full speed in fog, storm, and sunshine, and on the Northern Lane Route, winter and summer, for the following good and substantial reasons: First, that if another craft should strike her, the force of the impact would be distributed over a larger area if the Titan had full headway, and the brunt of the damage would be borne by the other. Second, that if the Titan was the aggressor she would certainly destroy the other craft, even at half-speed, and perhaps damage her own bows; while at full speed, she would cut her in two with no more damage to herself than a paintbrush could remedy. In either case, as the lesser of two evils, it was best that the smaller hull should suffer. A third reason was that, at full speed, she could be more easily steered out of danger, and a fourth, that in case of an end-on collision with an iceberg—the only thing afloat that she could not conquer—her bows would be crushed in but a few feet further at full than at half speed, and at the most three compartments would be flooded—which would not matter with six more to spare.
So, it was confidently expected that when her engines had limbered themselves, the steamship Titan would land her passengers three thousand miles away with the promptitude and regularity of a railway train. She had beaten all records on her maiden voyage, but, up to the third return trip, had not lowered the time between Sandy Hook and Daunt’s Rock to the five-day limit; and it was unofficially rumored among the two thousand passengers who had embarked at New York that an effort would now be made to do so.
CHAPTER TWO
Eight tugs dragged the great mass to midstream and pointed her nose down the river; then the pilot on the bridge spoke a word or two; the first officer blew a short blast on the whistle and turned a lever; the tugs gathered in their lines and drew off; down in the bowels of the ship three small engines were started, opening the throttles of three large ones; three propellers began to revolve; and the mammoth, with a vibratory tremble running through her great frame, moved slowly to sea.
East of Sandy Hook the pilot was dropped and the real voyage begun. Fifty feet below her deck, in an inferno of noise, and heat, and light, and shadow, coal-passers wheeled the picked fuel from the bunkers to the fire-hold, where half-naked stokers, with faces like those of tortured fiends, tossed it into the eighty white-hot mouths of the furnaces. In the engine-room, oilers passed to and fro, in and out of the plunging, twisting, glistening steel, with oil-cans and waste, overseen by the watchful staff on duty, who listened with strained hearing for a false note in the confused jumble of sound—a clicking of steel out of tune, which would indicate a loosened key or nut. On deck, sailors set the triangular sails on the two masts, to add their propulsion to the momentum of the record-breaker, and the passengers dispersed themselves as suited their several tastes. Some were seated in steamer chairs, well wrapped—for, though it was April, the salt air was chilly—some paced the deck, acquiring their sea legs; others listened to the orchestra in the music-room, or read or wrote in the library, and a few took to their berths—seasick from the slight heave of the ship on the ground-swell.
The decks were cleared, watches set at noon, and then began the never-ending cleaning-up at which steamship sailors put in so much of their time. Headed by a six-foot boatswain, a gang came aft on the starboard side, with paint-buckets and brushes, and distributed themselves along the rail.
Davits an’ stanchions, men—never mind the rail,
said the boatswain. Ladies, better move your chairs back a little. Rowland, climb down outo’ that—you’ll be overboard. Take a ventilator—no, you’ll spill paint—put your bucket away an’ get some sandpaper from the yeoman. Workinboard till you get it out o’ you.
The sailor addressed—a