Morgan Robertson was born in 1861. His
father was a ship's captain on the Great Lakes in America. He followed his father in becoming a seaman,
and spent six years at sea. After
this he quit seafaring and went to New York and studied to become a
jeweller. At 33 years of age he married.
But his business was not altogether a success, and
this together with a frail wife,
and his own failing eyesight, led
him to sell up. He desperately sought a
new means of making a livelihood.
One day he read a sea story by Rudyard Kipling, and this inspired him to make use of his own sea experiences. Beginning with short stories, he found that he could make a meagre living out of writing. But soon his wife became a full invalid, and this forced him to write continuously to keep them both alive, and writing didn't come all that easily to him.
One evening in 1897, whilst in his New York apartment on 24th Street, he had a new idea for a story, rather longer than had been his norm. It would be about a huge British liner, which he would christen the TITAN, and its disaster on its maiden voyage. He entitled the story THE WRECK OF THE TITAN, or FUTILITY. The following are some of the highlights of the story on the night of its crash. Here are the facts, as they were portrayed in the story.
"Ice ahead. - - Too late. - - The bow of the Titan began to lift. - - The music in the theatre ceased. - - People were screaming. - - A great gash appeared in its bow. - - 75,000 tons dead-weight had hurled itself at the iceberg at fifty feet per second.- - The ship gradually slipped over onto its side.- - The boilers broke away from their moorings.- - The roar of escaping steam.- - The whistling of air from hundreds of open dead-lights as the water entering expelled it.- - Gradually she sank with an enormous loss of life."
Now compare - The Titanic was a luxury liner built in Britain. It was huge, 66,000 displacement tons, and 882.5 feet in length. She carried 2,224 people on her maiden voyage. Sailing at full speed off the coast of Newfoundland in the late hours of April 14th 1912, she hit an iceberg. The bow was ripped open, cold water poured in through the gash, and the mighty ship was upended, and broke in two before finally sinking with the loss of 1,513 lives. There were not enough lifeboats, because the ship was said to be "unsinkable." Only 711 were saved.
The comparison with Morgan Robertson's story is uncanny, quite apart from the similarity of the name. The Titan was 75,000 tons (Titanic 66,000); 800 feet (882.5 feet); 19 watertight compartments (16); 3 propellers (3); 24 lifeboats (22); 3,000 people on board (2,224); traveling at 25 knots on hitting the iceberg (23).
Furthermore, the Titan was a British ship, the biggest, the safest, the Maiden voyage, April in the Atlantic, the iceberg, the crash, the sinking and the terrible loss of life. All these factors were common to the story and to real life.
Was this mere coincidence? How could a man write a story with so many coincidences, 14 years before it actually happened? The answer may be found by knowing that when he wrote, he had an astral writing partner, in other words he was making use of spiritually dark intelligences. This is why I refused to record his actual words in this account, because they had been written by demonic energy, and I have no desire to display the actual words, which would thereby give glory to Satan, and possibly defile the mind of the reader.
But this is not the only coincidence. The well-known English author William Thomas Stead (1849-1912) died on that Maiden voyage. He was a first-class passenger, an active researcher into psychic happenings, and had himself written a short story which proved to be an uncanny preview of the Titanic disaster.
In 1874, a work by the poet Celia Thaxter likewise described the unalterable fate of a collision between a ship and an iceberg.
What are we to learn from these facts? Is it not that Britain was making a boastful statement to the rest of the world? "Here is the world's greatest liner. She is unsinkable. We don't need to provide more than a handful of lifeboats." Isn't this just the sort of remark which gives Satan the power he needs to act? If it was true of Nebuchadnezzar, and later of Herod, why not of Britain? Here was the signal for Britain's destined collapse, given in 1912. She was riding high at that time. Her empire was at its zenith. But the days were drawing in. Only two more years to go and the whole course of history would be changed for ever. I see the sinking of the Titanic as a symbol of the sinking of Britain, and as with the ship, so with the Nation, quite the majority of its people will go down with it. Why? Because we have lost the faith of our fathers, and the Hands that once lovingly protected us have now imperceptibly withdrawn.
711 were saved, and 1513 lost out of 2224. This represents almost exactly one third saved, and one is reminded of the prophecy of Zechariah (13:8-9) which says, "In all the land two parts shall be cut off and die, but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried. They shall call upon my name and I will hear them." Although it may still be early days, I feel that this event of 90 years ago is significant, symbolic, and prophetic. Satan had the whip hand over the Titanic, and was able to predict in advance what he would do. But this nation is ultimately in the hands of God, and the events that are happening to us are not to be looked at as circumstantial, coincidental, or capricious. They are part of a divine plan. The Devil may strike, but God will use his activities to His own end. As always, he will ultimately bite the dust. We need much refining. So does the whole of the Western World, which is currently going through the birth pangs of a new age, not the “New Age” commonly spoken about these days, but the “Millennial Age of Gold.”