The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility

The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility is a short novel written by Morgan Robertson and published in 1898 under the title Futility.

It describes the largest ocean liner ever built, the Titan, held to be unsinkable, which strikes an iceberg in the North Atlantic on an April night and goes down with most of those aboard because she carries too few lifeboats.

The Titanic sank fourteen years later, in April 1912, in circumstances close enough to Robertson's invention — the name, the size, the iceberg, the shortage of boats — that the book has been read ever since as an uncanny anticipation. Robertson, a former sailor, put it down to knowing his trade. The novel was reissued after the disaster under the title it now carries.

Around the wreck runs the story of John Rowland, a disgraced officer serving as a deckhand, and the child he saves from the sinking ship.

"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."