Sep 24 2009
The Titanic And The Poseidon Adventure – Coincidence?
Anyone even the least bit familiar with the history of The Titanic is also familiar with one of the great coincidences surrounding the tragedy. Fourteen years prior to that fateful day in 1912, Morgan Robertson wrote a novella entitled “Futility”, about the world’s largest, most luxurious, and safest ocean liner. This new ship was said to be unsinkable due to the newest water tight compartments they had installed. Coincidentally, that ship sank after hitting an iceberg. An even more remarkable coincidence is that the name of the ship in the fictitious story was “The Titan”!
But here’s a small fact that most people are not aware of. At the exact moment on that fateful night in April of 1912 that the Titanic was striking the iceberg, over 200 Second Class passengers were in the Second Class dining room watching a screening of “The Poseidon Adventure”!
The film industry was still in it’s infancy in 1912 and had only recently graduated to projecting movies onto screens for entire audiences to enjoy. Movies of the day were short, no more than a reel, and of course, filmed in black and white with no sound. Nevertheless, this new entertainment industry had captured the imagination of the people and the Titanic carried it’s own movie projector and library of movies.
However, the film industry still had a somewhat unsavory image due to it’s Nickleodeon days. The First Class passengers aboard the Titanic were offended by this new form of entertainment. So the films were shown at 11 PM, after the First Class Passengers retired, and only in the Second Class dining room.
The audience of a few hundred Second Class passengers was so enthralled with The Poseidon Adventure – a tale of six passengers and crew members struggling to survive the sinking of their ship ” that they either didn’t feel the shudder of the ship as it struck the iceberg or they took no notice. In fact, they were so entertained by the movie that it was shown a second time, immediately after the first.
As stated before, most movies of the time were only 8 to 10 minutes long. But “The Poseidon Adventure” had just been released and it was 53 minutes from start to finish. By the time the Second Class passengers finished viewing it for the second time, it was well after 1AM. When they finally returned to the deck of the Titanic, it was to find that nearly all of the lifeboats had already been launched, most at only partial capacity and occupied by nearly all First Class passengers and crew.
This grim coincidence could explain why barely one third of the Titanic’s Second Class Passengers survived while nearly two thirds of the First Class passengers and crew made it to safety.