Last week’s biggest news was the loss of the Titan submersible (full Wikipedia article here). Out of the top of my head, the submersible had 5 passengers and was on an exploration tour (expedition?) to the Titanic wreck (Wikipedia article – of course). It got lost around Father’s Day of 2023 – and for 3 or 4 days authorities were hoping to find it – only to report that it’s wreckage had been located and that the submersible’s pressure hull had imploded around the time its mothership lost contact.
The thing that stood by most was the criticism of director James Cameron (also famous for designing these submersibles himself and still world record holder as the person who went went down the Mariana’s Trench, 10,000+ meters). In an interview the famous Titanic director and deep sea explorer criticized both the search operation and the CEO of Oceangate. Apparently, due to how the submersible was constructed, Oceangate was warned about possible future disaster (BBC).
That brings me to a book that is sort of related to this and was in the past seen as a very curious coincidence after the Titanic disaster and (now sort of) the loss of the Titan. Hear me out:
In 1898, the author Morgan Robertson wrote the book “Futility”, which describes the the Titan – the fastest and unsinkable passenger ship which sinks after it hits an iceberg. The protagonist and 13 others survive miraculously. The book has a love story, someone is being drugged and worst yet – man’s favourite sin – there’s a cover-up going on. There are so many similarities between the Titanic and this book that Robertson was frequently asked if he was clairvoyant – which he denied: according to him, he was just an expert in maritime shipbuilding and passenger ships.