Elizabeth Gladys ‘Millvina’ Dean, born Feb. 2, 1912, was two months old when she left on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. She died Sunday on the ninety-eighth anniversary of the launching of the ill-fated vessel that was billed as “practically unsinkable.” The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, and Millvina never married, eventually becoming an old maid–an outdated term, but relevant here.
The Titanic saga was a ‘mass event’ that reached the awareness of millions at the time and has lived on. As such, it attracted synchronicities. One of the most startling ones was related to a novel called, Futility, by Morgan Robertson that was published in 1898 about the sinking of a supposedly unsinkable ship called The Titan when it struck an iceberg. The fictional story all but mirrors the sinking of the Titanic fourteen years later. Here are some of the most striking similarities:
> The Titanic was the world’s largest luxury liner – 882 feet,displacing 66,000 tons- and was once described as being “practically unsinkable;” the Titan was the largest craft afloat – 800 feet, displacing 75,000 tons – and was considered “indestructible.”
> The Titanic had three propellers and two masts; the Titan was also equipped with three propellers and two masts.
> The Titanic carried only 20 lifeboats, less than half the number required for her passenger capacity of 3000; The Titan carried “as few as the law allowed”, 24 lifeboats, less than half needed for her 3000 capacity.
> While traveling at a high speed of 25 knots, the book details how the vessel crashed into an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean on an April night, causing it to sink. Twenty-five hundred passengers aboard the Titan drowned to death as their “voices raised in agonized screams”.
Morgan Robertson said that the idea for his book was inspired by a “vivid trance vision.” And to compound the strangeness of these parallels, a tramp steamer was traveling through the foggy North Atlantic with only a young boy on watch, some months after the Titanic had sunk, when suddenly an ephinous-like thought came into his head that the area that they were traversing at that moment, was the area in which the Titanic had sunk. He became very aware of the fact that the name of the ship he was on was similarly called the Titanian. Terrified and panic-stricken, he sounded a warning and the ship abruptly stopped. As some of the fog began to clear, the passengers on the ship were all relieved to see that they had stopped just in the nick of time, for a huge iceberg ominously loomed before them, directly in their path, and thus were spared.
UPDATE 6/1/09: Here’s the Indy petition related to the post on May 30. Feel free to sign!
Thank, Natalie. Dueling phone calls. Very interesting. Guess you and Hub are in align and on the right paths. Your story is on the dashboard and will be coming up.
Hi Trish and Rob! I have another doozy for you.Please come visit me and have a chuckle. I have just realised that your initials are R.M., just as my husband said" Why don't you go visit the Mc Gregors with your story?"
"I am on their page right now, Honey"
WEIRD!!!!!!!!
It definitely will be in the book. In fact, I was working on the chapter on synchronicity and creativity Sunday night and had included a rough draft of the Titanic story when I went to bed. The next morning, I read about the death of the last survivor! Synchronicity.
Nice to see the Futility synchronicity finally posted here. I hope it makes it into your book, because it has always been one of the more fascinatingly eerie examples of precognition. Makes you wonder how many other untold stories have been written, and later came to pass…
I remember reading about the Titan and the ralationship with the Titanic. I haven’t heard about the Titanian.
At Military Sealift Command Atlantic’s Fire Fighting and Damage Control School in New Jersey there were a couple of articles from the 1912 newspapers including one of the ships that helped rescure passengers.
One of our classes included information on why the ship was not unsinkable and why. Of course the scariest movie in the school was about the USS Forrestal flight deck fire during Vietnam.
Ray
Hi Max! Your friend got in touch with us. His synchronicity is pretty scary! Still waiting to hear back from him.
California Girl – you and Max should go buy dream journals and get busy! Here, we love weird!
Wow, great one, never heard about it before …. I wonder if the 9/11 synchromystics are into it? I almost never remember my dreams, I wonder how many synchronicities I might find if I did … or maybe I’d have less “waking synchronicities” that way … sometimes when they are really rolling in “real world life” feels more like a lucid dream than reality as I usually know it!
PS – your blog is really coming along great, the book should be amazing!
That is fascinating. If my remembered dreams weren’t so weird I’d probably write them down. However, I don’t seem to have the impending disaster kind. Enjoyed the parallels.
We’re writing Seven Secrets of Synchronicity together, and have co-authored other non-fiction. But our fiction writing is separate, other than acting as each other’s first editor.
Wow, I had no idea a book had been written about another ship sinking in much the same was as the Titanic. I wonder if any of the people on the ship had read the book. The second incident is even more eerie.
Fascinating story!
Your writing is so crisp. It inspires me to turn envy into accomplishment. Do you write together?
My husband proofs my posts because my creativity also applies to spelling and grammar. Peace.
Interesting. I was a big Titanic afficionado before that wretched movie came out. I almost corrected you because I’m used to the April 12th date. But you’re right, as always.