Back to the Titanic

 

Years ago, long before we wrote our first book on synchronicity, we read a book on meaningful coincidence called, Synchronicity & You, Understanding the Role of Meaningful Coincidence in your Life,  by Frank Joseph. So it was interesting to come across an article by Joseph recently that, in part, provided a plethora of synchros related to the sinking of the Titanic.

Joseph refers to synchronicity as “fundamentally a form of guidance that enters into the personal lives of every human being. Even if we knowingly discard it, at least part of its influence enters our subconscious.”

Besides the fascinating examples Joseph provides, we were impressed and surprised to see that he confirms one of our convictions about meaningful coincidences that we wrote about in The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity.

He says: “…powerful historical events likewise produce extraordinary high levels of meaningful coincidence. In fact, the more dramatic, even traumatic, the event, the greater the intensity and sheer number that appear.”

In our book, Secret 7 was called, The Global.  “When synchronicities manifest themselves through global events, the universe seems to be addressing us as a collective.”

Joseph points to the Titantic disaster as an outstanding example of such a global event.

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“Hardly any other single occurrence in the 20th century generated such a large collection of impressive examples. So many, in fact, they embraced all 17 categories of synchronicity. The meaningful significance of particular numerals played its part in the Titanic disaster, too – in that classic bad-luck symbol, Number 13.

“That this traditionally unfortunate number was factually associated with the most infamous of unlucky ocean liners should come as no surprise. Two, separate examples serve to illustrate. A British journalist, W.T. Stead, demonstrated his contempt for superstition by deliberately concluding a story on the 13th of April, 1912. Further tempting fate, his narration described the discovery of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus and the curse of violent death alleged to overtake anyone who verbally translated its inscription. The next day, R.M.S. Titanic met the disaster in which Stead perished.

“A fellow passenger who lightheartedly challenged the deadly number was from Youngstown, Ohio. George Wick had been traveling with his family through Europe for several months and booked homeward voyage on Titanic. While in transit to Cherbourg, where the doomed ship would make final docking before attempting her transatlantic crossing, he stopped at Paris. There he purchased a Grand Prix sweepstakes ticket, choosing Number 13 on purpose, just to prove to everyone that he was not superstitious. “Watch and see what it does for me!,” he exclaimed. Several days later, Wick went down with the vessel.

“Such warnings proliferated around the Titanic before she sailed. A White Star insignia crumbled to pieces in the hands of Mrs. Arthur Lewis while she was pinning it to her husband’s cap. He was just about to board R.M.S. Titanic, where he was a steward. At the time, she regarded the incident as a bad omen, although he dismissed her expressed anxiety as foolishness, until the ship foundered a few days later. Fortunately, Mr. Lewis survived.

“In another Titanic-related warning, Colonel John Weir, a mining engineer with a worldwide reputation, almost canceled his first class ticket because of distressful feelings about the voyage. Staying at London’s prestigious Waldorf Astoria, he awoke on the morning of April 10th to find that the water pitcher atop his dresser had unaccountably shattered, soaking his clothes. He seriously expressed his premonitory feelings to the hotel manager, who allayed the Colonel’s “superstitions” enough for him to reluctantly board the great ocean liner. While at sea, Weir told his secretary about the burst water pitcher, could not shake his sense of foreboding, and said he must get off Titanic at the next opportunity, when it docked in Queenstown, Ireland. Again dissuaded, he remained aboard, only to go down with the ship he intuited was doomed.

“As some measure of the magnitude of synchronous phenomena associated with the disaster, no less than 899 persons who initially booked passage for Titanic’s maiden voyage eventually refused to board her because of warnings they experienced in the forms of various omens, premonitions, dreams and precognitive events. An additional 4,066 would-be passengers either missed the boat or canceled their reservations, usually under apparently normal circumstances, but sometimes through unusual coincidences that prevented them from sailing.

“Blanche Marshall suffered a hysterical outbreak on April 10th, 1912, as she and her family watched the Titanic steam past the Isle of Wight from the roof of their home overlooking the River Solent. In a virtual panic, she said the liner would sink before it reached New York and railed against her husband, daughters and servants for being blind to her vision of masses of people drowning in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic.

“While neither Mrs. Marshall nor anyone she knew sailed aboard the Titanic, she was prevented from boarding another doomed liner just three years later by similar precognition. In 1915, her husband had booked tickets for their return trip to England from America aboard the Lusitania. She thought nothing of it until she saw the May 1st date of the tickets. Convinced the ship would be torpedoed and sunk on that passage, Blanche convinced him to change their booking. Interestingly, she felt safe traveling on Lusitania at any other time. It was only the prospect of the May 1st crossing that alarmed her. True to her sense of foreboding, the vessel was torpedoed and sunk with heavy loss of life on the same voyage she refused to take.

“A sub-category of “Premonitions” is synchronous literature. Published in 1892, From the Old World to the New described the sinking of an ocean liner after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. The “fictional” name of its captain, E.J. Smith, likewise belonged to the man who commanded R.M.S. Titanic, twenty years later. Interestingly, the author of From the Old World to the New, W.T. Stead, lost his own life on board the same ship.

“While Titanic was being readied for her maiden voyage, the May issue of Popular Magazine was coming off the presses with the story of Admiral, an 800 foot-long ocean liner crossing the North Atlantic through calm seas at 22 1/2 knots. She strikes an iceberg and sinks, leaving the survivors among her thousand passengers to be rescued by a steamer. Similarities to the real-life tragedy convinced readers the story was based on Titanic’s particulars. But author Mayn Clew Garnett was said to have received the details for his novelette in a dream he had while sailing on the Titanic’s sister ship, Olympic. While he may have been influenced by physical parallels noticed during his passage aboard the virtually look-a-like vessel, Garnett’s selection of 43 north latitude for Admiral’s collision with the iceberg was virtually the same position at which Titanic met her identical fate.

“Literature is not alone among the arts which figure into synchronous events. More in black humour than conscious precognition, a crewman and his wife made recordings for each other, the husband singing “Only To See Her Face Again” to her “True Til Death,” on April 7, 1912, prior to his service about the world’s greatest ocean liner. Three days later, he sailed on the Titanic, never to return.

“Animal interaction in human experience forms its own, distinct category of synchronicity, and was not missing in the fate of R.M.S. Titanic. The age-old sailor’s belief that rats leave ships long before any apparent danger of sinking was exemplified aboard R.M.S. Titanic, when two crewmen in a forward boiler room saw panic-stricken rodents scampering aft, away from the starboard bow. Next day, an iceberg struck that very spot. Both men escaped the disaster with their lives, because the rats’ sudden appearance had made them uneasy enough to station themselves, as often as possible, in the immediate vicinity of the lifeboats.

“Another incident of animal synchronicity associated with Titanic concerns Bess, a thorough-bred horse belonging to Isadore Straus, the co-founder of Macy’s Department Store. The same night he and his wife were killed in the sinking, six-year-old Bess suddenly died of causes the veterinarian was unable to determine.

“Tactile sensations comprise a sub-heading of “Death” in synchronicity. The unaccountable perfume of flowers associated with someone close and recently deceased is not uncommon. Another example belongs to May de Witt Hopkins, who experienced the fragrance of roses in her London home one day after R.M.S. Titanic sank. Although word of the disaster had spread by that time, names of those on board were not yet published. But with the flowery scent filling her room from no apparent source, Hopkins suddenly felt that someone she knew was trying to make her aware of his or her death. She later learned that a friend, who was, unbeknownst to her, a passenger on the ship, had indeed perished when it went down. Interestingly, her own mother, during the late 19th century, had been similarly alerted to the death of a loved one by a mysterious, flowery odour.

““Inanimate Objects,” like the White Star insignia that fatefully disintegrated in the hands of Mrs. Lewis, comprise a wide-ranging group of synchronous experiences. The Managing Director of the White Star Line, Joseph Bruce Ismay, survived the Titanic, but thereafter resigned his post, because he was publicly, although unfairly, blamed for the tragedy. He spent the next 25 years of his life in virtual seclusion, dying on October 17, 1937. That same Sunday afternoon, a framed, oval mirror that hung in Ismay’s office during his tenure at the White Star Line suddenly crashed from its hook, scattering broken pieces across the floor.

“Two weeks after Titanic was lost, a large wooden crate left unclaimed at Pier 61, in New York harbour, was opened by port authorities. They were surprised to see that it contained a meticulously detailed model of the sunken vessel. It had originally been sent to the US for promotional purposes on behalf of the White Star Line and was supposed to be returned to the London offices on the doomed ship’s return voyage. But the 30 foot-long representation was accurate in more particulars than anyone could explain. Although it presented a full compliment of 20 davits, there were only a dozen miniature lifeboats. Moreover, the bow was partially ruined and a long crack appeared from the keel toward the upper deck, mimicking the actual damage sustained by Titanic.

“As might be expected, “Dreams” are an important category of synchronicity. While traveling in Europe during the spring of 1912, a New York lawyer, Isaac C. Frauenthal, dreamt of being aboard a large ship which collided with some floating object and began to sink. His was a long, vivid nightmare, in which he clearly recalled the sights and sounds of calamity. Several nights later, the identical psycho-drama repeated itself, and he told his brother and sister-in-law that it must be a warning against their up-coming voyage on R.M.S. Titanic.

“But they laughed at his dream and convinced him to go through with their return trip to America aboard the doomed White Star liner. All three survived the sinking foretold in Isaac’s recurring nightmare.

“Perhaps the most inexplicable aspects of synchronicity are those more infrequent instances of “Parallel Lives.” When Lucien P. Smith narrowly escaped death during the terrible fire on Viking Princess, in 1966, it was his second, major disaster at sea. A survivor of the Titanic, he was in his mother’s womb when that ship sank, just as Mrs. Astor, also aboard, was pregnant with her son, John Jacob. Both children were born eight months after the sinking, in which their fathers perished. Their mothers died in the same year, 1940.

“Individual lives and major conflicts are events sometimes so powerful they echo beyond their own time and appear to replay themselves in the future. Such an extraordinary case of parallel history began to unfold when William C. Reeves went aboard the tramp steamer, Titanian, as an ordinary seaman, departing Scotland for New York on April 13, 1935. Ten days later, at 2300 hours, he was ordered into the foc’s’le head to stand watch.

“Although the sea was calm, the darkness was moonless and impenetrable. Reeves began to feel increasingly uneasy, not only because of the very poor visibility conditions he now faced as ship’s look-out. He thought, too, of the premonitory novel he had been reading in his cabin, Morgan Robertson’s Futility. Reeves was unable to keep his mind from drifting back to a dramatic moment in the book when Titan’s look-out missed seeing an iceberg in time to avoid disaster. Also, he could not help but notice the ironic similarity of his ship’s name, Titanian, and Robertson’s Titan with Titanic.

“As his sense of irony deepened into anxiety, he realized that the time was now 23:35, just five minutes before the hour Titanic struck the iceberg. Reeves knew that penalties were severe for raising a false alarm, the darkness ahead showed no sign of danger, and for some moments he hesitated to act. But at last his feelings of imminent collision overwhelmed him and he ordered the bridge to stop engines, “Iceberg ahead!”

“No sooner had the ship’s speed dropped off, than she smashed into several large fragments of ice, which twisted her bow and disabled her propeller. Slowing to full stop, Titanian’s crew were astonished to behold an enormous iceberg looming directly ahead out of the darkness. The floating mountain appeared at 23:40, the same hour of Titanic’s collision.

“Doubtless, had the Titanian not stopped in time, she would have followed her predecessor to the bottom. An SOS sent to Cape Race, Newfoundland, brought rescue to the stranded crew.

“The multiple synchronicities of this parallel event – the similar ships’ names, Reeves’ powerful premonition, his reading of Robertson’s book, precisely the same hour for meeting with a deadly iceberg – far out-strip all considerations on behalf of mere chance. Instead, they clearly define the operative principle of meaningful coincidence as a legitimate phenomenon.”

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Interestingly, W.T. Stead is involved in two of the Titanic synchros, though Joseph didn’t mention the oddity. Thinking it was an error, I looked up the book with the Titanic-like saga, From the Old World to the New, and indeed, W.T. Stead is the author. He tested his own fate, and boarded the Titanic on its maiden voyage, and went down with the ship.

Frank is the editor in chief of Ancient American magazine and the author of numerous books including The Destruction of Atlantis, The Lost Civilization of Lemuria, Survivors of Atlantis, The Lost Treasure of King Juba, Atlantis in Wisconsin, The Lost Pyramids of Rock Lake and Last of the Red Devils. He lives in Minnesota.

 

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16 Responses to Back to the Titanic

  1. Darren B says:

    On the subject of great movie themes and sync,here’s a little film about April 20th and the King Kong movies that sync via the stars that unite them –
    https://vimeo.com/64913812
    Looks like Adolph Hitler could have landed a role in one of those Kong movies too,since he was born on April 20th,as well.-)

  2. Darren B says:

    I have read the book “Synchronicity & You, Understanding the Role of Meaningful Coincidence in your Life” and found it a good read.
    Interesting also that the Titanic sunk on the 15th April
    (even though it struck the iceberg on the 14th ) which was the day of the Boston Marathon this year.
    And I’m staying out of this discussion going on about sync / sink in this comments column .-)

  3. mathaddict3322 says:

    I appreciate your comments, Rob. But, no, I don’t consider all types of divination to be synchronicities. Astrology, as you and Trish both know as expert astrologers, is a Science based on Astonomy and the influences of the heavenly bodies on the inhabitants of the planet. Metaphysical Mathemaitics, (as opposed to modern numerology) is also a valid Science. Both these Sciences are used in divination, but I can’t for the life of me put them under the umbrella of synchronicity. My mind takes me to a different perspective. And we must remember that NO ONE, no matter how
    brilliant, no matter how genius, is ALWAYS correct. I tend to sift carefully through
    material, accept what resonates within me as truth, store some of it for later perusal and renewed appraisal, and occasionally simply trash parts of it that I know I’ll never be able to incorporate into my personal convictions. Howver, I am ALWAYS open to the ideas and philosophies of others, and am ALWAYS willing to shift my own thoughts and ideas as I continue to learn and grow. History reminds us that our ancestors believed the world was flat, and that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that rocks never could fall from the skies. All these have proven to be false, but onde were accepted as absolutes. This being so, I try to live and learn with my mind as open as it can possibly be.

    • Rob and Trish says:

      Any astronomer would be horrified at any comparison between astronomy and astrology. The only similarity between the two is that they both deal with planets and stars . Astrology is the essence of divination and falls under the umbrella os synchros, as does the tarot

  4. mathaddict3322 says:

    I humbly disagree with you, Trish and Rob, about the 9-11 event not being a synchronicity. The “inner event” was the girls deciding to not go to work. Due to that inner decision, their lives were spared. That, for me, represents an inner and outer coming together of meaningful coincidence. The “inner” cause being their decision to not go to work, the “outer” effect being that they did not die. As far as my using the word “genuine” in reference to synchronicity, there ARE folks who attempt to turn events that are not synchronicities into synchronicities. I wasn’t being disrespectful, just commenting on incidents that I’ve wirnessed over time. I’m not a Jung scholar and would never pretend to be one. Nevertheless, I do have opinions that for me don’t necessarily follow Jung’s ideologies, just as I have opinions that are contradictory to Freud’s works…..essentially in his case, that everything we experience is relative to sex and to parental relationships. And obviously I disagree with Jung’s theory that all paranormal experiences fall under the umbrella of synchronicity. Just the very definition of synchronicity itself seems to contradict his hypothesis in that regard. For me, that is a gross over-simplification of events that are often magickal and inexplicable. I’d love to know how he determines that a discarnate spirit appearing in a photograph is the cause and effect of an inner and outer experience coming together in a meaningful coincidence. But again, that’s just my own opinion. Please,please allow me to say with sincerity that just because I’m expressing a disagreement does NOT indicate that I’m arguing. PLEASE! I’m by no means arguing. Presenting a dissenting point of view should be taken as nothing more than that….a difference of opinion, and I deeply appreciate the option of being allowed to do that on this blog! Wouldn’t the world be boring if all of us were in agreement on everything? Lively discussions of topics from differing points of view is enlightening and informative.

    • Rob MACGREGOR says:

      Well said. But maybe we can agree that it is difficult to distinguish telepathy from synchronicity. Certainly any telepathic experience can be considered a meaningful coincidence. Also, I hope we can agree that all divination, including astrology, falls under the umbrella of synchronicity.

  5. mathaddict3322 says:

    P.S. One more example, for me at least, of genuine synchronicty is the story I’ve shared here about my Dad’s and Mom’s anniversay clock. Their 22nd anniversay was on May 15th. He was already terminal weeks prior to that, and he purchased one of those beautiful glass-domed anniversay mantle clocks for Mom’s gift. He gave it to my aunt and asked her to give it to Mom in the event that he couldn’t. He couldn’t. He was deeply comatose on May 15th, and transitioned on May 24th at 9:50pm. (This is the time listed on his autopsy report.) My aunt had given Mom the clock, and it was sitting on my Grandparents’ mantle, where we stayed during the final weeks of Dad’s life. The hands of the clock stopped at precisely 9:50. Later, my Mom took the clock to numerous repair shops, and while some were able to get it running briefly, it never failed to stop at 9:50. I have it now, and when I initially inherited it, I also took it to several repair shops. No dice. The clock now sits in my room, its hands on 9:50. For me, THAT is meaningful coincidence. THAT is synchronicity. There is nothing PSI about it. Their anniversary clock stopped moving forward when their marriage ended as his soul left the earth. I understand it may be difficult to separate PSI elements from synchronicity, but as I said, at least for me, they constitute different incidents. oh wow…my little number thingie below says “blank” + two = 11.
    Of course, the answer is 9+2=11. THIS also represents, for me, a genuine synchronicity, considering that in my previous comments I was writing about the events of 9-11. No PSI elements here. Just meaningful coincidence!! And I love it! 🙂

  6. mathaddict3322 says:

    This is a good, informative, and enjoyable post. However, I’d like to toss in some thoughts. “Synchronicity” is defined as “Meaningful Coincidence”, if I understand all that has been written and spoken about it. I am unable to put clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, premonition, and precognition, (dreams or otherwise), in the category of “Synchronicity”. To me, these incidents are experiences that occur outside the perceptions of the five normal physical senses of sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. Such PSI incidents don’t meet the definition or criteria of Synchronicity in my mind.

    Syncronicity, to me, doesn’t include or define PSI experiences . An example of genuine synchronicity with which I’m personally familiar happened during 9-11.
    My middle son’s wedding was on Saturday, 9-8-2001. The wedding was quite large and formal. Two of his bride’s attendants lived as room mates in New York, and both of them worked in an office on a top floor of Tower One. They flew back to New York on Monday, and on Tuesday morning they were both so exhausted from all the wedding festivities, the flights, etc, that they decided they were simply too tired to go to work, and they stayed home. They had no premonitions, no inklings of any imminent dangers. They were just tired, and took the day off to rest. Had they gone to work that day, the two girls would have been among the first to die when the plane hit that tower. Again, neither girl had any sense of ANYTHING being wrong or impending. They were tired. Period. And because they were tired, they lived. THAT, for me, constitutes real synchronicity. Another experience that demonstrates true synchrnicity was the incident when I had a Reike healing, and my deceased, beloved Dad was discussed. I got into my car to come home after the healing, turned on the radio, and the old song “Oh My PaPa” was being played on the car radio. For me, THAT is synchronicity. There was nothing about the incident that involved PSI elements. If we label the PSI elements of clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, premonitions, and precognition as synchronicity, then the readings done for Trish and Rob by Kathy in Cassadaga are nothing more than a series of synchronicities that Kathy “picks up” out of the ether or from discarnates or even telepathically. I can’t buy this, guys. Synchronicity as meaningful coincidence, absolutely. But synchronicity as the definition and explanation for paranormal experiences…..it just doesn’t “fit” for me. When I snapped photos with a drugstore camera inside the 120-year-old house where my husband’s brother was found dead in September, and had the pictures developed at Walgreen’s, there is a very clear image of a child’s face appearing in a mirror in the living room in one of the pictures. There was no living child there. But her image is crystal clear. Perhaps etheric, perhaps with ectoplasmic energy , the spirit child was able to manifest. For me, this isn’t synchronicity. PSI elements and Synchronicity are, for me, two entirely separate categories of experiences.

    • Rob and Trish says:

      Carl Jung believed all paranormal experiences fall under the umbrella of synchronicity. It doesn’t define or explain it.

    • Rob and Trish says:

      It’s very hard to tell the difference from synchronicity and many psi events. If I think of someone I haven’t talked to months and that person suddenly calls, is it synchronicity or telepathy? Or both? It’s all a matter of terminology. However, I would say the 9-11 experience you mentioned is not a synchro, because synchronicity involves the coming together of two similar inner and outer experiences without cause and effect, and the coincidence is meaningful. In the case you cite there was no related inner experience.

  7. Dale Dassel says:

    I had known about Morgan Robertson’s Futility novel predicting the Titanic sinking, but the rest of those synchros are news to me. It’s awesomely chilling that the fate of so many people were changed by their prescient synchronicities, determining whether or not they boarded the ship. Just… wow.

  8. There are so many Titanic stories – too many for them not to be meaningful and they still ‘go on’

    When the Costa Concordia hit rocks and sank in 2012 Yannic and Keven Sgag reported that – as the ship hit the rocks – they were listening to music in the restaurant. At that precise moment they were playing one of the songs from the Titanic film: Celine Dion’s hit My Heart Will Go On.

    Also Valentina Capuano was on board and her grandmother went down with the Titanic 100 years earlier.

    • Rob and Trish says:

      Back when we were leading adventure tours on the Upper Amazon during the late ’80s, the ship – a converted rubber boat – became stuck on a sandbar. At the same time, several of us were below deck watching Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and astonishingly the video had reached the scene where the ship was stuck on a sandbar and the crew set out to drag it overland to another part of the river. Besides that synchro, the ship that Herzog used was a sister ship to the one we were on. That’s one the most astonishing travel synchros we ever experienced.

  9. gypsy says:

    oh, wow! these titanic stories, all fascinating to read! fascinating! when we were kids, i remember our mother telling us stories of people she knew who were on the ship – but am unable to remember the stories – funny how our memories work – or don’t work – because until i read this post, i’d forgotten that we’d heard those stories growing up – geeeeee!

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