author
Morgan Robertson
1861–1915
Best remembered for the eerie 1898 novella later known as The Wreck of the Titan, this American sea writer turned hard-earned maritime experience into brisk, vivid fiction. His work is still talked about because the fictional disaster in that story resembled the sinking of the Titanic years later.
4 Audiobooks
"Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea
by Morgan Robertson
Over the border
by Morgan Robertson
The Wreck of the Titan or, Futility
by Morgan Robertson
The Grain Ship
by Morgan Robertson
About the author
Born in Oswego, New York, in 1861, Morgan Robertson grew up with the sea close at hand: his father was a Great Lakes ship captain, and Robertson himself spent years in the merchant service before turning to other work and eventually to writing. That background gave his fiction a practical, convincing feel that helped him stand out as a storyteller of ships, sailors, and marine adventure.
He wrote many short stories and novels, but his reputation rests mainly on Futility (1898), later republished as The Wreck of the Titan. After the Titanic sank in 1912, readers were struck by how closely Robertson's earlier tale of a supposedly unsinkable liner colliding with an iceberg seemed to echo the real disaster.
Robertson died in 1915. Beyond the famous Titan connection, he remains an interesting figure because he brought firsthand nautical knowledge to popular fiction and helped shape the rough, imaginative world of late 19th- and early 20th-century sea stories.