Morgan Robertson
| Morgan Andrew Robertson | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | September 30, 1861 |
| Died | March 24, 1915 (aged 53) Atlantic City, New Jersey |
Morgan Andrew Robertson (September 30, 1861 – March 24, 1915) was an American author of short stories and novels, and the self-proclaimed inventor of the periscope.
Robertson was the son of Andrew Robertson, a ship captain on the Great Lakes, and Amelia (née Glassford) Robertson.
Morgan went to sea as a cabin boy and was in the merchant service from 1866 to 1877, during which he rose to first mate. Tired of life at sea, he studied jewelry making at Cooper Union in New York City and worked for 10 years as a diamond setter. When that work began to impair his vision, he turned to writing sea stories, placing his work in such popular magazines as McClure's and the Saturday Evening Post. Robertson never made much money from his writing, a circumstance that greatly embittered him. Nevertheless, from the early 1890s on he supported himself as a writer and enjoyed the company of artists and writers in a small circle of New York's bohemia.
Robertson is best known for his short novel Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, first published in 1898. This story features an enormous British passenger liner called the SS Titan, which, deemed to be unsinkable, carries an insufficient number of lifeboats. On a voyage in the month of April, the Titan hits an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic, resulting in the loss of almost everyone on board. There are many remarkable similarities to the real-life disaster of the RMS Titanic. The book was published 14 years before the actual Titanic, carrying an insufficient number of lifeboats, hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912 and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic, killing most of the people on board. The similarities between the two has lent credibility to conspiracy theories regarding the Titanic.
...
Wikipedia