Morgan Robertson - Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan.pdf - Titanic - feiversa

Futility

The Wreck of the Titan

by Morgan Robertson (1898)

This edition by Nicholas Wordsworth

[Solarplasmoid@yahoo.com]

August 2008

CHAPTER 1

She was the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men.

In her construction and maintenance were involved every science,

profession, and trade known to civilization. On her bridge were

officers, who, besides being the pick of the Royal Navy, had passed

rigid examinations in all studies that pertained to the winds, tides,

currents, and geography of the sea; they were not only seamen, but

scientists. The same professional standard applied to the personnel

of the engine-room, and the steward's department was equal to that

of a first-class hotel.

Two brass bands, two orchestras, and a theatrical company

entertained the passengers during waking hours; a corps of

physicians attended to the temporal, and a corps of chaplains to the

spiritual, welfare of all on board, while a well-drilled fire-company

soothed the fears of nervous ones and added to the general

entertainment by daily practice with their apparatus.

From her lofty bridge ran hidden telegraph lines to the bow, stern

engine-room, crow's-nest on the foremast, and to all parts of the ship

where work was done, each wire terminating in a marked dial with a

movable indicator, containing in its scope every order and answer

required in handling the massive hulk, either at the dock or at sea -

which eliminated, to a great extent, the hoarse, nerve-racking shouts

of officers and sailors.

From the bridge, engine-room, and a dozen places on her deck the

ninety-two doors of nineteen water-tight compartments could be

closed in half a minute by turning a lever. These doors would also

close automatically in the presence of water. With nine

compartments flooded the ship would still float, and so no known

accident of the sea could possibly fill this many, the steamship Titan

was considered practically unsinkable.

Built of steel throughout, and for passenger traffic only, she carried

no combustible cargo to threaten her destruction by fire; and the

immunity from the demand for cargo space had enabled her

designers to discard the flat, kettle-bottom of cargo boats and give

her the sharp dead-rise - or slant from the keel - of a steam yacht,

and this improved her behaviour in a seaway. She was eight hundred

feet long, of seventy thousand tons displacement, seventy-five

thousand horse-power, and on her trial trip had steamed at a rate of

twenty-five knots an hour over the bottom, in the face of

unconsidered winds, tides, and currents. In short, she was a floating

city - containing within her steel walls all that tends to minimize the

dangers and discomforts of the Atlantic voyage - all that makes life

enjoyable.

Unsinkable - indestructible, she carried as few boats as would satisfy

the laws. These, twenty-four in number, were securely covered and

lashed down to their chocks on the upper deck, and if launched

would hold five hundred people. She carried no useless,

cumbersome life-rafts; but - because the law required it - each of the

three thousand berths in the passengers', officers', and crew's

quarters contained a cork jacket, while about twenty circular life-

buoys were strewn along the rails.

In view of her absolute superiority to other craft, a rule of navigation

thoroughly believed in by some captains, but not yet openly

followed, was announced by the steamship company to apply to the

Titan : She would steam at full speed in fog, storm, and sunshine,

and on the Northern Lane Route, winter and summer, for the

following good and substantial reasons: First, that if another craft

should strike her, the force of the impact would be distributed over a

larger area if the Titan had full headway, and the brunt of the

damage would be borne by the other. Second, that if the Titan was

the aggressor she would certainly destroy the other craft, even at

half-speed, and perhaps damage her own bows; while at full speed,

she would cut her in two with no more damage to herself than a

paintbrush could remedy. In either case, as the lesser of two evils, it

was best that the smaller hull should suffer. A third reason was that,

at full speed, she could be more easily steered out of danger, and a

fourth, that in case of an end-on collision with an iceberg - the only

thing afloat that she could not conquer --- her bows would be

crushed in but a few feet further at full than at half speed, and at the

most three compartments would be flooded --- which would not

matter with six more to spare.

So, it was confidently expected that when her engines had limbered

themselves, the steamship Titan would land her passengers three

thousand miles away with the promptitude and regularity of a

railway train. She had beaten all records on her maiden voyage, but,

up to the third return trip, had not lowered the time between Sandy

Hook and Daunt's Rock to the five-day limit; and it was unofficially

rumoured among the two thousand passengers who had embarked at

New York that an effort would now be made to do so.

CHAPTER 2

Eight tugs dragged the great mass to midstream and pointed her nose

down the river; then the pilot on the bridge spoke a word or two; the

first officer blew a short blast on the whistle and turned a lever; the

tugs gathered in their lines and drew off; down in the bowels of the

ship three small engines were started, opening the throttles of three

large ones; three propellers began to revolve; and the mammoth,

with a vibratory tremble running through her great frame, moved

slowly to sea.

East of Sandy Hook the pilot was dropped and the real voyage

begun. Fifty feet below her deck, in an inferno of noise, and heat,

and light, and shadow, coal-passers wheeled the picked fuel from the

bunkers to the fire-hold, where half-naked stokers, with faces like

those of tortured fiends, tossed it into the eighty white-hot mouths of

the furnaces. In the engine-room, oilers passed to and fro, in and out

of the plunging, twisting, glistening steel, with oil-cans and waste,

overseen by the watchful staff on duty, who listened with strained

bearing for a false note in the confused jumble of sound --- a

clicking of steel out of tune, which would indicate a loosened key or

nut. On deck, sailors set the triangular sails on the two masts, to add

their propulsion to the momentum of the record-breaker, and the

passengers dispersed themselves as suited their several tastes. Some

were seated in steamer chairs, well wrapped --- for, though it was

April, the salt air was chilly --- some paced the deck, acquiring their

sea legs; others listened to the orchestra in the music-room, or read

or wrote in the library, and a few took to their berths --- seasick from

the slight heave of the ship on the ground-swell.

The decks were cleared, watches set at noon, and then began the

never-ending cleaning-up at which steamship sailors put in so much

of their time. Headed by a six-foot boatswain, a gang came aft on the

starboard side, with, paint-buckets and brushes, and distributed

themselves along the rail.

"Davits an' stanchions, men --- never mind the rail," said the

boatswain. “Ladies, better move your chairs back a little. Rowland,

climb down out o' that --- you'll be overboard. Take a ventilator ---

no, you'll spill paint --- put your bucket away an' get some sandpaper

from the yeoman. Work inboard till you get it out o' you."

Morgan Robertson - Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan.pdf

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