{"id":641,"date":"2012-03-22T12:16:54","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T12:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/?p=641"},"modified":"2012-03-22T20:10:19","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T20:10:19","slug":"sea-tales-by-titanic-predictor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/2012\/03\/22\/sea-tales-by-titanic-predictor\/","title":{"rendered":"Sea-tales by Titanic predictor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This little nugget is part of a small display in the Trinity College Library atrium that I have put up of books and documents in the library relating to the sinking of the Titanic, which happened 100 years ago on April 15, 1912.<a href=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2012\/03\/img452.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-642\" src=\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2012\/03\/img452-245x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"245\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2012\/03\/img452-245x300.jpg 245w, https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2012\/03\/img452-836x1024.jpg 836w, https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/files\/2012\/03\/img452.jpg 1818w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 245px) 100vw, 245px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Spun-Yarn: Sea Stories<\/em>.\u00a0 Morgan Robertson (New York, 1898).<\/p>\n<p>A collection of five sea-stories by the author of <em>Futility<\/em>, published the same year and mentioned below.\u00a0 Morgan Andrew Robertson was born in Oswego, NY in 1861, the son of a Great Lakes ship captain.\u00a0 He served in the merchant marine from 1877-86, became a jeweler in New York until his eyes failed him, and then made a meager living writing until he died almost penniless in 1915.<\/p>\n<p><strong>In<\/strong> <strong>1898<\/strong> Robertson concocted a novel about a fabulous Atlantic liner, far larger than any that had ever been built.\u00a0 Robertson loaded his ship with rich and complacent people and then wrecked it one cold April night on an iceberg. \u00a0This somehow showed the futility of everything, and in fact, the book was called <em>Futility<\/em> when it appeared that year.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fourteen years later<\/strong> a British shipping company named the White Star Line built a steamer remarkably like the one in Robertson\u2019s novel (which the library does <em>not<\/em>, unfortunately, own).\u00a0 The new liner was 66,000 tons displacement; Robertson\u2019s was 70,000 tons.\u00a0 The real ship was 882.5 feet long; the fictional one was 800 feet.\u00a0 Both vessels were triple screw and could make 24\u201325 knots.\u00a0 Both could carry about 3,000 people, and both had enough life-boats for only a fraction of this number.\u00a0 But then, this didn\u2019t seem to matter because both were labeled \u201cunsinkable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>On April 10, 1912<\/strong>, the real ship left Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York.\u00a0 Her cargo included a priceless copy of the Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t of Omar Khayy\u00e1m and a list of passengers collectively worth $250 million dollars ($100 billion today).\u00a0 On her way over she too struck an iceberg and went down on a cold April night.\u00a0 Robertson called his ship the <em>Titan<\/em>; the White Star Line called its ship the <em>Titanic.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u2014Walter Lord, <em>A Night to Remember <\/em>(1955)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This little nugget is part of a small display in the Trinity College Library atrium that I have put up of books and documents in the library relating to the sinking of the Titanic, which happened 100 years ago on April 15, 1912. Spun-Yarn: Sea Stories.\u00a0 Morgan Robertson (New York, 1898). A collection of five [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/watkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}