Before the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912, another ocean liner described as a floating palace set sail from Southampton on her maiden voyage. She struck an iceberg and sunk with a heavy loss of life, since there were not enough life boats on board.
The “other” ship existed only on paper, though. This story was the subject of a novel written by Morgan Robertson. the book was written in 1898, 14 years before the Titanic began her fateful voyage. The name of the vessel in Robertson’s novel, Futility, was Titan.
The similarity between the two ships didn’t end with the names. Titan and Titanic were approximately the same size, were capable of attaining the same rate of speed, and both were capable of carrying approximately 3,000 people. Both ships were described as “unsinkable” and both ships went down in the same area of the North Atlantic.
In 1892, another man, journalist William Thomas Stead, wrote a short story that was also similar to the Titanic disaster. Stead was also a Spiritualist who had received messages through mediums urging him not to set foot on the Titanic. He disregarded the warnings and was one of Titanic’s passengers. Stead lost his his life when Titanic went down, along with 2,223 others.
Omens and Signs
The Titanic was the subject of several bad omens and signs. Some have even suggested that the name “Titanic” is cursed. It is alleged that when Titanic left port, a cockerel crowed during the day; this is considered to be a very bad omen by sailors.
As Titanic made her way past the Isle of Wight, people living on the Island stood by the shore, waving and cheering. A Mrs. Marshall suddenly grabbed her husband’s arm and cried out, “It’s going to sink, that ship is going to sink! Save them! Save them!” No one listened to Mrs. Marshall, who appeared to be mentally disturbed. What Mrs. Marshall didn’t know at the time was that her mother was a passenger on board the Titanic.
A number of people (about 20) who had booked passage on the Titanic had dreams about the ship sinking. Some of them cancelled their trip at the last minute.
A Mummy’s Curse?
Perhaps a clue to the Titanic’s fate has been found in the records stored at the British Museum. The Titanic was carrying an Egyptian mummy, along with allegedly cursed artifacts, in her hold. The relics were on their way to a museum in the United States. The mummy (of an unidentified pharoah) had already been dubbed “the accursed mummy” by the newspapers of the day.
Everyone who had photographed the mummy had died under mysterious circumstances. As the mummy was being loaded on board the ship, it was dropped; one of the dock workers suffered a broken leg.
Another Strange Coincidence
Yet another strange Titanic coincidence is that in the summer of 1975, a family in Bedfordshire (England) was watching a movie about the sinking of the Titanic on television. Just as the 1935 version of the film got to the point where the ship struck the iceberg, a huge block of ice crashed through the roof of the house!
