Titanic Sinking Foretold In Fictional Accounts Years Before Disaster
The Titanic's plunge into the frigid Atlantic was predicted several years before the disaster — not by an oracle or in a conspiracy theory but in seemingly innocuous works of fiction about shipwrecks.
The Sinking of a Modern Liner
The most striking and prophetic example is The Sinking of a Modern Liner, written in 1886 by English journalist W.T. Stead.
The story is eerily similar to the actual Titanic's ill-fated demise. In Stead's book, an ocean liner leaves Liverpool and while on a journey to New York City, becomes involved in a collision. In the ensuing panic, many passengers drown because there are too few lifeboats.In a strange twist of fate, Stead inadvertently foretold his own death in the book: he was onboard the Titanic when it sank in April 1912.
It would appear his own work didn't dissuade him from embarking on long ocean journeys across the Atlantic.
The captain of the ship in Stead's book brandishes a revolver to keep steerage passengers from storming the lifeboat deck, a detail that some have chalked up as another similarity with the real-life disaster but that historical accounts like A Night to Remember by Walter Lord have debunked.
