From her fatal maiden voyage in 1912 to discovery of her ocean grave in 1985, the Titanic has fascinated believers in precognition. In particuler, they have pointed to the similarities between the real Titanic and the fictional ship, the Titan, whose sinking was chronicled in the 1898 novel Fultility. Believers conclude that author Morgan Robertson had seen a prophetic vision of the Titanic disaster fourteen years before the fact.
Certainly, the similarities are uncanny: the name of the ships, their designations as unsinkable and the largest vessels afloat, their collisions with icebergs during April voyages, the high loss of life because each carried too few lifeboats. There were also technical similarities.
But do these commonalities prove that Robertson foresaw the Titanic tragedy? Or is another explanation possible?