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".
RMS Titanic in popular culture
Newsreels on the "Titanic" disaster were hampered by the fact that hardly any footage of the ship existed. A few seconds of film of "Titanic"s launching on 31 May 1911 were shot in Belfast by local company Films Limited, and the Topical Budget Company appears to have had some footage – now lost – of the ship at Southampton. Other than that, all that existed were photographs, which were of only limited use in a motion picture. Newsreel strands, such as the Gaumont Film Company's "Animated Weekly", made up for the lack of footage of the ship itself by splicing in newly shot material of the aftermath of the sinking. These included scenes such as "Carpathia" arriving at New York, the "Titanic" survivors disembarking and the crowds gathering outside the White Star Line offices in Brooklyn as lists of the casualties were being posted.