A few years ago I read a back issue of Reader's Digest and that is when I came across this novel called Futility (The Wreck of the Titan). This work of fiction written by Morgan Robertson closely resembles the fate of Titanic: the largest luxury cruise liner afloat at the time, called Titan described as unsinkable with a capacity of 3,000 was on its maiden voyage to America hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic on an April evening, capsized and sank with more than half of its 2,500 of its passengers perished because they brought only "as few lifeboats as the law allowed".Similarly, RMS Titanic left its last port of call, Queenstown (now Cobh) on 10 April 1912 for its maiden voyage bound for New York. This Olympic class British passenger liner was built to be "the last word on luxury" and was designed to be unsinkable. There were over 2,200 passengers on board the vessel which was considered the largest ship afloat at that time. It carried only 24 lifeboats for a ship with a capacity of 3,000 which resulted to the death of more than 1,500 when the ship collided with an iceberg on its 4th day of voyage (about 11:40 pm, ship's time on 14 April 1912). The ship gradually sank in the next 2 and a half hours at 2:20 a.m. it split in half and went down bow-first with over a thousand people still on board.
The American novel was written in 1898, almost a decade and a half before Titanic.
Public outrage from what is said to be one of the largest peacetime tragedy at sea spurred much-needed regulation in the maritime sector. Two years later, in 1914 SOLAS was born. The sinking of the Titanic is not the most disastrous incident at sea but it is arguably the most popular and perhaps another lasting contribution of the Titanic aside from her history are lessons it taught us: to take preventive steps to avoid tragic loss and ensure that life was protected when out in the open waters.
