So one of the books that made my reading list as a side quest to the book project was Morgan Robertson’s Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan. For Titanic aficionados, this was the 1898 novel about a shipwreck that supposedly mirrored (14 years in advance) the sinking of the HMS Titanic, right down to a creepy similarity of the vessels’ names. Much has been made of this similarity, so I tracked down the book through the Kindle library and last night got around to reading it.
They should have stuck with the original name.
The story revolves around the former naval officer John Rowland, who after being spurned by the woman he loved years before fell into drink and became a shell of the man he once was. Working as a common sailor on the Titan, a luxury liner that is supposedly unsinkable, he runs into said flame, Myra, as she travels from New York to England with her husband and young daughter, also named Myra. Now, by 1898 standards this probably made more sense, but in our times the elder Myra comes off as a haughty bitch – we aren’t given a lot of their backstory, but apparently the reason Myra broke it off with John was because he was an atheist and she couldn’t convince him to join her religious fold. That seems fair enough, but because he’s an atheist, in her mind that makes him evil and she automatically believes everything he does is with an evil intent toward her personally. At one point early in the story her child runs off and John happens to find her, so the mother automatically assumes John took the child with the intent of murdering her and demands the captain arrest him and have him held in chains until they reach England, so she can press charges and have him hanged.
Shortly after this, the ship rams an iceberg and sinks within minutes. Early in the story it is mentioned that there weren’t enough lifeboats aboard for all the passengers anyway, but with how fast the ship goes down it’s unlikely it would have made any difference. Only seven people, including the captain, first mate, boatswain, and the elder Myra, make it off in the one lifeboat deployed; John and the toddler Myra (who had coincidentally sleepwalked up to the deck where John was on watch) are thrown onto the iceberg the ship hit and left stranded there by the unscrupulous captain (John had previously witnessed the ship slice another in two and leaving the people of that boat to drown, and told the captain he intended to report the crime when they reached England), and everyone else goes down with the ship.
The rest of the book is about how John works to protect little Myra in the hopes of reuniting the child with her mother, and how he changes into a better man as a result. In the first day of being shipwrecked he singlehandedly fights and kills a hungry polar bear that was trying to eat the child, using nothing but a small knife to do so (it really is a ridiculous scene) and losing one of his arms in the process. Shortly after that he prays for the first time and his prayers are immediately answered with a boat that sees and rescues them. Back in London, he reports the maritime crimes of the captain, mate, and boatswain, ruining their lives like they ruined the lives of the families of the drowned sailors from the boat they destroyed. He then ruins the underwriter for the Titan’s insurance (described in the book as a “weaselly” Dutchman)- apparently the underwriter insured both the Titan and the boat she destroyed, but little Myra’s grandfather had invested all of his wealth in the Titan, so if the insurance didn’t pay, he (and, subsequently, the two Myras) would be destitute.
Finally, still in the rags from the original shipwreck, John takes little Myra back across the ocean to New York to be reunited with her mother, stops to buy the little girl new clothes (out of his own meager earnings) and get cleaned up first, and then is promptly arrested for stealing the child. Her mother just happens to be shopping at the same store and again automatically assumes John is trying to kill the child (no satisfactory explanation is ever given for why she keeps coming to that conclusion). At court the next morning, the news stories of John’s heroic rescuing of the child and forcing the captain’s officers to face justice finally reaches New York, the judge not only dismisses the charges but in the 1890’s way essentially calls the elder Myra out as a psychotic and ungrateful bitch. John, meanwhile, is left homeless down at the dock where he starts rebuilding his life by first catching fish, then slowly working his way up from nothing to a cushy government position. As he does, he finally gets over Myra, only to (after he’s respectable and has money again on his own!!) receive a note from her asking him to come back.
That’s how the story ends, but I was yelling at the Kindle that Myra was a whore and John deserved much, much better.
In short, the book’s original title of Futility works a lot better – the story isn’t really about the wreck, it’s about a man clawing his way back up to grace despite the obstacles conspiring to keep him down. Despite some of the more ridiculous passages it was a pretty good story. The description of the boat at the very beginning comes off as a metaphor for John’s past, and the sinking of the boat could be viewed as the sinking of his past (i.e. the grand life he was once part of sank, now he had to survive and move on).
Of course, the similarities in the description of the boat with the real Titanic led to capitalism taking over, and a quick name change (to Wreck of the Titan) allowed the authors to profit off of an incredible disaster.
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Sources:
Robertson, M. (1912). Futility, or the wreck of the Titan (2nd ed.). Rahway, NJ: The Quinn & Boden Press.
That Escalated Quickly (image). (2012). Retrieved from http://www.knowyourmeme.com.
thefourthcastle.com 