In a brief final chapter covering several years, Rowland progresses from homeless and largely anonymous fisherman to a desk job and finally, two years after passing a civil service exam, to "a lucrative position under the Government".Ī later edition includes a followup: Rowland receives a letter from the mother (who congratulates him and pleads for him to visit her) and from the girl.Īlthough the novel was written before the RMS Titanic was even conceptualized, there are some uncanny similarities between the fictional and real-life versions. A sympathetic magistrate discharges him and rebukes the mother for being unsympathetic to her daughter's savior. Once there, the girl is recovered by her mother and Rowland is arrested for her kidnapping. Rowland refuses to testify before court and instead goes to New York with the girl. They are rescued eventually by a passing ship and brought back to England.īack in England, Rowland tells of the events of the voyage, including the destruction of the smaller ship, the attempted cover-up and drugging by the captain and officers (who have also survived) and the ordeal on the iceberg to an insurance underwriter responsible for insuring both ships. The pair find a lifeboat washed up on the iceberg, and Rowland also fights and kills an attacking polar bear. Rowland saves the young daughter of a former lover by jumping onto the iceberg with her. The next night, the ship hits an iceberg and capsizes, and only 13 people survive. The captain and the officers attempt to discredit Rowland's testimony by drugging him. Rowland, who witnessed the collision while on lookout, is offered a bribe by the captain for his silence, but refuses and vows to expose the deed once in port. One night, while sailing between America and Ireland, the Titan crashes into a smaller ship at full speed in fog, splitting it in half. Now an alcoholic, he works as a deckhand on the Titan. The first half of Futility introduces the Titan, described as the longest and fastest ship in the world that is also considered unsinkable, and the hero John Rowland, a disgraced former US Navy officer who was dismissed from the service. After the sinking of the Titanic the novel was reissued with some changes, particularly to the ship's displacement. The Titan and its sinking are famous for similarities to the passenger ship RMS Titanic and its sinking 14 years later. It features a fictional British ocean liner named Titan that sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean after striking an iceberg. It was revised as The Wreck of the Titan in 1912. Futility is a novella written by Morgan Robertson, first published in 1898.
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