The Wreck of the “Titanic” Foretold?

The Titanic’s memory lives on today in documentaries, movies, and even a Broadway musical. Persistent investigators remain on the case, offering new theories to explain its demise.

Those who strongly believe in precognition point to Morgan Robertson’s sea novel The Wreck of the Titan, published fourteen years before the Titanic went down, as proof of the power of extrasensory perception.

This rare fifty-page novel is reproduced here in full, along with a selection of other writings that seem to foretell the Titanic’s fate, including an excerpt from a novel by famous British journalist and spiritualist W.T. Stead, a short story called “The White Ghost of Disaster,” and several poems about ships hitting icebergs in the North Atlantic.

Martin Gardner includes notes and running commentary that explore the coincidences and laws of chance as applied to this historical phenomenon. He also includes a new preface with reaction and updates to the original publication of The Wreck of the Titanic Foretold?

Martin Gardner, a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, is the author of many books, including Weird Water & Fuzzy Logic, and Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus.