SECTION 6

The Official Story

LITERARY FORESHADOWING
OF THE TITANIC DISASTER

At the time the Titanic sank, the 1 May 1912 issue of The Popular Magazine, an American pulp magazine, was on the news stands. It contained the short story “The White Ghost of Disaster”, which described the collision of an ocean liner with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean, the sinking of the vessel, and the fate of the passengers. The story, by Mayn Clew Garnett (the pseudonym of sea-story author T. Jenkins Hains), created a minor sensation.

In 1898, fourteen years before the Titanic disaster, Morgan Robertson wrote a book called The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility. This story features an enormous British passenger liner called the Titan, which, deemed to be unsinkable, carries insufficient lifeboats. On an April voyage, the Titan hits an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic with the loss of almost everyone on board.

In 1912, the German Berliner Tageblatt newspaper published a book in serial form that ran from 9 January until 24 April. This work of fiction was written by Gerhard Hauptmann, who would receive the Nobel Prize in Literature later that year. One month before the fateful April maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, the story was published by S. Fischer Verlag as the novel Atlantis. Atlantis is a romantic tale set aboard the fictitious ocean liner Roland, which is coincidentally doomed to a fate very similar to that of the RMS Titanic. This perceived anticipation of the Titanic disaster received considerable attention at the time. A Danish silent film also titled Atlantis was produced by Nordisk Film based on the novel. The film was released less than a year after the actual tragic event. The association became evident, and it was banned in Norway, perceived as being in “bad taste”.

Source: Wikipedia