In 1909, The Titanic's sister ship, Olympic - the first of the White Star Line's triumvirate of "Wonder Ships" - was launched.
Excitement mounted as the Olympic was launched into the River Lagan on 20th October 1910; however, as she set off, a gust of wind blew her against the dry-dock, denting some of her exterior plates. It was a clear warning of the problems of moving the biggest ship in the world in such a confined area. The Olympic returned to dry-dock awaiting repairs and completion; work continued apace on her sister ship in the adjoining berth.
The Olympic left Southampton on 14th June, 1911 with a full complement of passengers; the trip was marred by a minor scrape in New York as she almost sank the tug-boat O L Hallenbeck. The tug's owner sued the White Star Line for $10,000, but the case was dropped due to lack of evidence.
On 20th September, 1911, the Olympic set sail from Southampton on her fifth voyage; however, this one was to stand out as the most eventful.
The Hawke emerged with a badly crumpled bow (right), but was able to make it to Portsmouth.
The Olympic received a double-gash to the stern (left) - flooding two compartments and damaging a propeller.
There were no casualties and the Olympic was hauled back to Southampton, where she was patched-up, before being shipped back to Belfast for full repairs at the hands of Harland & Wolff's shipbuilders.
A subsequent enquiry found that:
"the collision was solely due to the faulty navigation of the Olympic"
Captain Smith was later exonerated, and in fact rewarded by being given the captaincy of what was to be the White Star fleet's flagship - the Titanic.
Perhaps it was the intervention of fate, for due to the Olympic's collision with the HMS Hawke, the date of the Titanic's maiden voyage would have to be put back. A new date was announced by White Star: Wednesday, 10th April, 1912.
Off the coast of the Isle of Wight, Captain Smith, in charge of the Olympic, was heading in roughly the same direction, yet in a parallel course to the Royal Navy cruiser, HMS Hawke.
The wheel of the Hawke had jammed and at 12:46pm the cruiser rammed the Olympic's hull with tremendous force.
Robertson's novel describes a luxurious ocean-liner's collision with an iceberg in the arctic conditions of the North Atlantic ocean.
The story bears startling resemblance to a disaster which would take place 14 years after its publication: Both liners were on their maiden voyage in the same month from Southampton to New York; carrying 2,000 passengers; having triple-screw propellers; weighing almost exactly the same amount; and sinking in the same stretch of water with a shortage of lifeboats. The liner's name? The Titan.
The most well-known precursor that almost every Titanic enthusiast recalls is the book written by Morgan Robertson, "Futility".
Furthermore, a novel written in 1892 by the spiritualist Stead, "From the Old World to the New", seemed eerily relevant to the Titanic disaster. Again, a ship strikes an iceberg in the North Atlantic, with the survivors being saved by a passing cargo ship, Majestic, captained by an E.J. Smith - Titanic's captain being Edward J. Smith.
Stead had written an article in 1886 called "How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor". In this story, an unnamed steamer collides with another ship and due to a shortage of lifeboats there is a large loss of life.
Whilst the Titanic sank, Stead sat quietly reading a book in the First Class Smoking Room. Like Captain Smith, he went down with Titanic.
W.T. Stead, a passenger on the Titanic, had written an article in 1886 called "How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor". In this story, an unnamed steamer collides with another ship and due to a shortage of lifeboats, there is a large loss of life.
The Titanic had a touch of ill fortune before she cleared the harbour of Southampton.
As she passed down stream her immense bulk - displacing 66,000 tons - drew the waters after her with an irresistible suction that tore the American liner New York from her moorings; seven steel hawsers were snapped like twine.
The near collision was noted in a letter from Arthur Paintin (steward to Captain Smith) to his parents, dated 11/4/1912:
Mr. Stephen Jenkin appeared to be fully aware of his fate, for when he heard that his first passage to America had been cancelled due to a coal-strike and that he was to travel on the Titanic, he removed all of his personal belongings and gave them to his parents. He left Southampton with little to his name, and little hope of his return.
As the ship left Southampton harbor, a gathering of people stood on the roof of Jack and Blanche Marshall's house celebrating the maiden voyage of the Titanic.
As her daughter later reported in her autobiography, Blanche Marshall gripped her husband's arm as the ship passed and cried, "That ship is going to sink before it reaches America!"
"Oh, Blanche, it's unsinkable," someone said, trying to comfort her.
"It's going to sink, I tell you," she replied loudly.
Her sharp tone caused everyone to stop talking and stare at her in amazement.
"Don't stand there staring at me!" she said. "Do something. I can see hundreds of people struggling in the icy water. Are you all so blind that you are going to let them drown?"
Blanche Marshall's vision was so vivid and upsetting that the party ended quickly, and no one mentioned the Titanic to her again for five days.
On the night of April 12, 1912, a fourteen- year-old English girl named Anna Lewis was spending the night with her grandmother when she had a terrifying dream about a ship. Asleep in her grandmother's bedroom, Anna dreamed that she was standing by a road looking at a scene she knew well: a nearby park that had a large lake. Then a large ship appeared to be sailing on the lake. She recalled:
After a while I must have gone to sleep again and saw the very same scene, and when the people screamed I must have done the same. Gran was real livid with me this time"
Her dream left quite an impression on the family. Unknown to Anna and other members of her family at the time, her uncle (her grandmother's son), Leonard Hodgkinson, had taken the position of senior fourth engineer on the Titanic. Leonard had wanted to sail on every White Star liner before he retired and asked to be transferred to the Titanic to fulfill his wish. No one, except his wife, knew of the last-minute change, which makes Anna's dream even stranger still.
Early in 1912, Mr. Benjamin Hart decided to sell his home in Essex, England, and move his family to Canada. Business had been bad, and Hart wanted to get a fresh start in a new country. His wife, Esther, didn't like the idea. From the moment that her husband shared his plans with her, Esther sensed a feeling of disaster.
She asked him to reconsider a number of times, but he wouldn't change his mind. First, he sold his business, then the family's house, and finally he booked passage on the steamship Philadelphia.
Then Benjamin learned that, because of a coal strike, they would not be sailing on the Philadelphia. Esther was pleased to hear of the cancellation. Perhaps the terrible feeling that she had would go away. A few days later, Hart was told that they could sail instead on a new ship, the White Star Line's Titanic.
The Titanic was the largest and most luxurious ship in the world. It was designed to be unsinkable, featuring a double hull and fifteen watertight doors that, in case of an accident, could be closed almost instantaneously to seal off the ship's compartments and keep her afloat. She was set to leave Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912.
The fact that they would be sailing on an unsinkable boat should have comforted his wife, Hart thought. So he told her, "I know you haven't wanted to go up to now, but surely now that you know you're going in this wonderful ship, the chance of a lifetime, surely you've overcome all your fears."
"Oh, no," she replied."I feel even worse about it than I did before." Then she began to cry: "That ship will never get to the other side of the Atlantic," she warned.
On the day of their departure from Southampton, they stood on the dock with their daughter, Eva, and observed the massive ship in silence. Both Benjamin and Esther knew what the other was thinking. Finally, Benjamin picked up Eva and began to carry her up the gangplank.
"Please, Benjamin," Esther pleaded one last time. "Don't."
Hart turned around, quite angered by now, and said, "Well, this is ridiculous. If you feel so badly you'd better go home to your mother and I'll go on my own and you can follow when you see I've got there quite safely."
Esther had no intention of going to her mother's house, so she composed herself and followed her husband up the gangplank. By the time they reached their cabin, though, she had made a decision. She may have decided to accompany her husband on the ship, but she was going to do as she wished now that they were on board.
"I am not happy about being on this ship," she announced, "and I will not be keeping my usual hours. I will sleep in the daytime and sit up at night, because whatever's going to happen I feel sure will happen in the night."
14th April 1912, Captain W. Sowden - stationed at Kirkcudbright in Scotland - sat at the bedside of a dying orphan by the name of Jessie. Sowden recorded Jessie's final words:
Having uttered these words, the girl fell into a coma. However, just minutes before Jessie died, Captain Sowden swore that he heard the bedroom door latch being lifted and felt the presence of another being in the room. Speaking to a friend, Sowden stated,
About the same time that Jessie died, at 11:40 P.m., Esther Hart felt the Titanic lurch "like a train pulling into the station." As she had done the night before, she woke her husband and asked him to find out what had happened.
"It's the ice floes," he said.
"Benjamin, please," Mrs. Hart pleaded.
Reluctantly, he gave in. As soon as he left, Esther woke her daughter and began to dress her.
When Benjamin Hart returned a short time later, his face was ashen.
"You'd better put this thick coat on," he told Esther.
She never asked what had happened. As she told reporters later, "There was nothing to ask him. I didn't have to ask him what it was. I didn't know it was an iceberg, but I knew that it was something." Her feeling of disaster was coming true.
He helped his wife and his daughter make their way to the lifeboats, put them safely in, and watched them lowered into the water. Benjamin Hart, whose wife had tried to warn him that there would be disaster, was one of the 1,450 people who died when the Titanic sank.
Upon hearing that her son was to play on Titanic, Hume's mother pleaded with her son not to go to sea on that vessel, for she had dreamed that the Titanic would founder on its way to New York.
The violinist did not heed his mother's warning and booked his passage (and his fate) on Titanic
Violinist Frank Adelman and his wife had booked passage to New York on Titanic when, a few nights prior to its departure, Mrs. Adelman had a premonition of impending danger and advised her husband to cancel their booking. Frank's opinion differed, so the couple agreed to toss a coin to decide whether or not they should travel on the Titanic. Mrs. Adelman won, and the couple remained in Southampton.
Scots-born John Law Hume, one of the band's violinists, had been on the White Star Line's Olympic when it had struck the HMS Hawke.
