Morgan Robertson (died March 24, 1915) was an American author of short stories and novels who claimed to have invented the periscope. Amelia Robertson and Andrew Robertson, a Great Lakes ship captain, had a son named Robertson. Morgan went to sea as a cabin boy and served in the merchant service from 1876 to 1899, finally rising to the rank of first mate. Tired of life at sea, he studied jewelry at Cooper Union in New York City and worked as a diamond setter for ten years. When that work began to affect his vision, he began penning marine stories, which were published in major journals like McClure's and the Saturday Evening Post. Robertson is best known for his short novel Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, which was first published in 1898. This story revolves around the SS Titan, a gigantic British passenger liner that is thought to be unsinkable but carries insufficient lifeboats. On a journey in April, the Titan collides with an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean, killing nearly everyone on board. There are many parallels to the real-life sinking of the Titanic. The novel was written 14 years before the Titanic, which perished in the North Atlantic Ocean on the night of April 14, 1912, after colliding with an iceberg with insufficient lifeboats.
