Futility: the novel that “foresaw” the Titanic

This case has two nights, fourteen years apart, and only one of them is real.

The first is on paper. In 1898 a novella by Morgan Robertson is copyrighted by M. F. Mansfield[gutenberg-1912]. Its ship is the Titan: in the text most people read, 800 feet, "the largest craft afloat"[gutenberg-1912], considered practically unsinkable. In the narrator's words she carried as few boats as would satisfy the laws[gutenberg-1912], 24 lifeboats for 500 people. In April, in the North Atlantic, she strikes an iceberg and sinks, and, according to the catalogue summary, thirteen survive[gutenberg-catalogue].

The second night is in the record of the United States Senate. Picture it. On 14 April 1912 the Titanic has been receiving ice warnings all day, from the Baltic, the Californian and the Amerika, according to the Senate committee's account of the voyage[us-senate-voyage]. The weather is clear. She is making not less than 21 knots. One of the messages that day reads, in the report's transcription, We are stopped and surrounded by ice[us-senate-voyage]. The Titanic strikes an iceberg that night.

The Senate's count afterwards is blunt. 2,223 aboard, 1,517 lost, 706 saved[us-senate-summary], and lifeboat capacity for 1,176 people. The report notes the ship was provided with 14 lifeboats, of capacity for 65 persons each[us-senate-summary], plus smaller boats.

Put the two side by side and you can see why the story has lasted. A giant liner. A name one syllable apart. April. Ice. Too few boats. It is a striking match, and it is fair to say so.

The question is which book you are actually holding.

Start with the novel, because that is where the trail has its first trap.

The full text most people find online is the Project Gutenberg edition[gutenberg-1912], and it is not the 1898 book. Its title page carries two copyrights: 1898 by M. F. Mansfield and 1912 by Robertson. It is the reissue, titled The Wreck of the Titan, or Futility, and according to the encyclopedia entry the file uses as a route to sources, the 1912 version changed the ship's displacement and added a new ending[wiki-futility]. So the 800 feet, 70,000 tons and nineteen watertight compartments are figures from the post-disaster text. What the 1898 original said about tonnage is still unconfirmed; the scan could not be opened from here.

Next, the real ship's record. The US Senate Commerce Committee published Report No. 806 in 1912. Its summary table gives 2,223 aboard, 1,324 passengers and 899 crew[us-senate-summary], with 1,517 lost and 706 saved. Its voyage section records the ice warnings and a speed of not less than 21 knots[us-senate-voyage]. The file reads both through the Titanic Inquiry Project's transcription because the senate.gov pages returned errors.

Then the context Robertson was writing in. A year before the novel, according to Mental Floss[mentalfloss-2022], The Practical Engineer reported that White Star had ordered the Oceanic from Harland and Wolff: 704 feet, three screws, 45,000 to 50,000 horsepower. The same article explains that lifeboat rules then depended on a ship's tonnage, not on how many people it carried.

And last, a piece of paper from Robertson himself. Mental Floss quotes his reply to the poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox: I merely tried to write a good story with no idea of being a prophet[mentalfloss-2022].

That is the trail: a revised novel, a Senate report, a trade-press note and an author's letter. Lined up properly, they start to tell you why the match looks the way it does.

Here is where the story bends. Not because the parallels are false, but because each one has a known cause.

First, the text. The version usually quoted is the 1912 revision[gutenberg-1912], and the ship's displacement in it was changed after the disaster[wiki-futility]. Any comparison of tonnage made from that text is comparing the Titanic with a book edited after the Titanic.

Second, the trend. Giant, triple-screw liners were already being ordered; the Oceanic was described in the trade press a year before the novel[mentalfloss-2022]. And because lifeboat rules were tied to tonnage rather than passengers, a huge ship with too few boats was not a wild guess. It was the law of the day, written as fiction. The novel's own line says as much: as few boats as would satisfy the laws[gutenberg-1912].

Third, the differences, which are large. The Titan sails at 25 knots; the Titanic at not less than 21[us-senate-voyage]. The Titan has thirteen survivors[gutenberg-catalogue]; the Titanic had 706[us-senate-summary].

Then the arithmetic. Statisticians Diaconis and Mosteller describe how coincidences grow when near-matches count as matches and misses are forgotten: forgetting many failed predictions makes success seem more surprising[diaconis-1989].

The fair other side deserves its full say. Mental Floss calls the novella well documented and chillingly accurate[mentalfloss-2022], and Robertson did not simply call it luck. In his reply to Wilcox he suggested that writers slip into a hypnoid, telepathic and percipient condition, half asleep while apparently awake. The name, the month, the iceberg and the boats together are more than many readers will accept as chance.

The file's Finding is Explained. The book is genuine, the parallels are genuine, and nothing in the record requires foresight to account for them.

Which leaves a few things the record still does not hold.

The honest gaps here are small, but they are real, and one of them sits right at the centre.

• What the 1898 text actually said. The original edition's figures for the Titan's tonnage, length and lifeboats could not be read; the scan returned an error. The text the file quotes is the 1912 revision[gutenberg-1912]. Secondary sources give 45,000 tons for 1898, but that is not confirmed here.
• Whether Robertson said more. Beyond the reply to Ella Wheeler Wilcox quoted by Mental Floss[mentalfloss-2022], the file has found nothing from him on the parallels.
• The Senate dates. The resolution, hearings and report dates on senate.gov could not be opened; the figures come from the Titanic Inquiry Project's transcription of Report No. 806[us-senate-summary].
• The sceptical literature. Martin Gardner's 1986 analysis and a 2012 TIME piece were not opened, so neither is used.

What the record does not prove is just as clear. It does not show that Robertson foresaw anything; the parallels are general features of large liners of his time and of the lifeboat rules then in force[mentalfloss-2022]. It does not show that the widely read figures are the 1898 originals. And it does not show that the two disasters match in detail: speed, size, survivors and the course of events all differ.

The comparison table, the documents and the timeline are below. Read the copyright line on the novel first.