Legends and myths regarding RMS Titanic
At the time the "Titanic" sank, the 1 May 1912 issue of "The Popular Magazine", an American pulp magazine, was on the news stands. It contained the short story "The White Ghost of Disaster," which described the collision of an ocean liner with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean, the sinking of the vessel, and the fate of the passengers. The story, by Mayn Clew Garnett (the pseudonym of sea-story author T. Jenkins Hains), created a minor sensation. In 1898, fourteen years prior to the "Titanic" disaster,
Morgan Robertson wrote a book called "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan". This story features an enormous British passenger liner called the "Titan", which, deemed to be unsinkable, carries insufficient lifeboats. On a voyage in the month of April, the "Titan" hits an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic with the loss of almost everyone on board. There are some similarities between the fictional sinking of the "Titan" and the real-life sinking of the RMS "Titanic".
Legends and myths regarding RMS Titanic
The root of this claim comes from the testimony of one of the "Samson"'s officers, Hendrik Bergethon Naess, who told a Norwegian newspaper in 1912 that his ship had been near a large liner with "many lights" shooting rockets into the sky the morning of April 15th. Because the "Samson" was seal hunting illegally in territorial waters, the ship's officers decided to move on quickly to avoid detection. This claim seems unlikely as the Titanic was 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, well beyond territorial waters in 1912. The ship had no radio, so they wouldn't have received any of the "Titanic"s distress signals. Naess claimed that the crew only became aware of the "Titanic"s sinking after they arrived in Isafjordur, Iceland in mid-May. If correct, the coordinates of "Samson" place her within 10 miles of "Titanic"s position as the ship was sinking. .