Morgan Robertson was born and raised in Upstate New York. His father was a captain aboard ships that sailed the Great Lakes. Morgan followed in his footsteps and became a ship’s first mate.
The life of a sailor didn’t suit him, however, so he moved to New York City and began a career as a fiction author.
1890: Drawing on his maritime expertise, Robertson wrote seafaring tales that were published in popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post.
Over a period of 25 years, he went on to pen 200 short stories and 14 novels. Nearly all of them were about life at sea.
Robertson never received literary acclaim. Nor did he strike it rich as an author. He barely made any money off his writing at all.
One of his short novels would eventually be recognized, however - not for its fine writing but for its startling prescience of true events.
The book sold few copies at the time it was released in 1898. Several years later, though, it was reissued and sold out.
The novel was entitled Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan.
It’s the fictional tale of an alcoholic deckhand named John Rowland aboard an English vessel called the Titan.
Robertson described it as the largest vessel on earth and unsinkable.
The Titan sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to New York with 3,000 passengers. Yet it carried just 24 lifeboats.
Then on a night in April near midnight, the ship smashed into an iceberg and sank to the ocean depths.
All but 3 people died. Rowland and his love interest in the story survived by climbing onto the iceberg.
Compare that to the true events of the Titanic disaster of 1912.
The Titanic, a supposedly unsinkable ship and the largest in the world, sailed across the Atlantic from England to New York.
On an April night at 11:40 pm, it hit an iceberg and sank.
Out of 2,240 passengers and crewmen, 1,500 people perished because of a dearth of lifeboats.
Robertson’s fictional story and the reality of the Titanic were eerily similar.
Even the massive dimensions and capabilities of his fictitious Titan were roughly the same as the Titanic.
Yet Robertson’s novel was published 14 years before the Titanic sank - long before the ship was either constructed or even conceived.
Shortly after the real Titanic disaster, Robertson’s publisher reissued his novel to massive sales.
Half a century later, another strange Robertson story raised eyebrows - Beyond the Spectrum.
Published in 1914, it told the story of a Japanese surprise attack on United States Navy vessels in a Hawaiian harbor.
The title refers to a special weapon that used ultraviolet light to burn people - vaguely similar to the atom bomb.
Robertson died one year after publication of Beyond the Spectrum.
He was found having taken an overdose of paraldehyde, an anticonvulsant and sedative used in the treatment of alcoholism. He was 53 and left behind a wife.
Also strange, he died standing upright with his head resting against a bureau.
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