| Birth Name: | Morgan Andrew Robertson |
| Birth Date: | September 30, 1861 |
| Birth Place: | Oswego, New York, US |
| Death Date: | March 24, 1915 |
| Death Place: | Atlantic City, New Jersey, US |
| Occupation: | Writer |
| Notable Works: |
Morgan Andrew Robertson (died 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 1876 to 1899, during which time he was promoted eventually 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 began writing sea stories, his work being published in such popular magazines as McClure's and the Saturday Evening Post. Robertson never made much money from his writing, a circumstance that distressed him greatly. Nevertheless, beginning with the early 1890s his main source of income was as a writer and he enjoyed the company of other bohemian-style artists and writers in New York.
Robertson is known best for his short novel Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, first published in 1898. This story features an enormous British passenger liner named the SS Titan, which, deemed to be unsinkable, carries an insufficient number of lifeboats. On a voyage during the month of April, the Titan hits an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean, resulting in the loss of almost everyone on board. There are many close similarities with the real-life sinking of the 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 in the North Atlantic Ocean, killing most of the people on board. The similarities between the fictional Titan and the real Titanic have caused comment ever since the tragedy.[1]
In 1905, Robertson's book The Submarine Destroyer was published. It described a submarine that used a device known as a periscope. Despite Robertson's later claims that he had "invented" a prototype periscope himself (and was refused a patent), Simon Lake and Harold Grubb had perfected the model used by the U.S. Navy by 1902, three years before Robertson's "prescient" novel.
In 1914, in a volume that also contained a new version of Futility, Robertson included a short story named "Beyond The Spectrum", which described a future war between the United States and the Empire of Japan, a popular subject at the time.[2] Japan does not declare war but instead ambushes United States ships en route to the Philippines Islands and Hawaii; an invasion fleet about to begin a surprise attack on San Francisco is stopped by the hero using the weapon from a captured Japanese vessel. The title refers to an ultraviolet searchlight used by the Japanese, but invented by the Americans, to blind American crews.
Robertson authored Primordial / Three Laws and the Golden Rule, a novella about shipwrecked children growing up together and becoming enamored of each other on a desert island. Fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs acknowledge Robertson's contribution to the works of Henry De Vere Stacpoole, particularly The Blue Lagoon. They believe that both Robertson's and Stacpoole's writings influenced Burroughs' creation of Tarzan of the Apes.[3]
On the afternoon of March 24, 1915, Robertson was found dead in his room at the Alamac Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He was 53 years old. It was believed initially that he died of an overdose of paraldehyde, which he was taking as a sleep aid, however a physician stated that heart disease was the cause.[4]
This list may not be complete.
McClure's Magazine and Metropolitan Magazine collaborated in 1914 to publish a four-volume set of short fiction. All of the stories were previously published, perhaps all but "The Wreck of the Titan" first published in magazines.
Episode 17 (segment "Titan") of the American television show tells the story of Robertson (Harris Fisher) writing Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan/Futility.
The strange correlation between Robertson's Futility and the actual sinking of the RMS Titanic was referenced in the 2009/2010 video game Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors.
The TV series One Step Beyond references an episode on Morgan Robertson "Night of April 14th" (season 1: episode 2) where a woman has nightmares of drowning in the ice cold ocean. Later, her husband plans a sailing trip from England to its destination in New York on the passenger ship Titanic. In the end of the show, host John Newland references Morgan Robertson in the similarities of his 1898 novella to the actual Titanic.
In the 1996 PC Game , while taking a tour of the Titanic in the Turkish Baths, the character Trask describes and shows the character the book Futility and references how it gives him an ominous feeling about the ship.