Andrew Carnegie and the Titan submersible

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history.

During the last 18 years of his life, he became a leading philanthropist in the United States, Great Britain, and the British Empire. In that time, he gave away around $350 million (roughly $5.9 billion in today's dollars, almost 90 percent of his fortune, to charities, foundations and universities.

He funded Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Peace Palace in the Netherlands, founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others.

Mr Carnegie was an auto-didact, hence his special project was the funding and building of libraries, especially in small places like the Scottish town from which he came. Carnegie libraries sprung up all over the United States and Canada. I remember fondly the little library in the my hometown, which 30 years after the benefactor's death had a population numbering in the low thousands.

What does this have to do with the Titan submersible, which, as I write, is lost somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Newfoundland, somewhere near the wreck of the RMS Titanic?

Consider the list of those aboard, destined, it would seem, for a watery grave near that of the souls who remains are still there, in the ruins of the great ship.

Those on board the Titan are: 

* Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a Frenchman, her pilot; 

* Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the American entrepreneur making big bucks by turning the Titanic into a tourist attraction;

* Hamish Harding, a British billionaire (basesd in the United Arab Emirate), pilot, explorer and adventurer;

* Shahzada Dawood, a British-Pakistani businessman, one of the richest men in Pakistant, and 

* his son and heir Suleman.

Mr Rush's company reportedly charged Messrs Harding, Dawood et fils $250,000 to go down in the briny deep for a spot of disaster tourism. The spending of three quarters of a million dollars for not-so-cheap thrill of being able to get close to the watery graves of the unfortunate passengers of the Titanic is what Thorsten Veblen would call "conspicuous consumption" -- a means to show one's social status, especially when publicly displayed goods and services are too expensive for other members of a person's class.

In other words, no-one benefits, except perhaps Mr Rush and his partners. To the spoiled billionaires who want to play with a new toy, $750,000 may be chump change, but it could so a lot of good for the less fortunate multitudes of No-longer-great Britain or (especially) the shithole that is Pakistan. Had they given the money to charity, Messrs Harding, Dawood and Dawood Jr might have something to say for themselves when they answer to their Maker... later today.

The man who foresaw the Titanic disaster 14 years previous

Even if you never saw the movie, you will doubtless know of the Titanic disaster, which occurred in the early morning of 15 April 1912. RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner, belong to the White Star Line. While on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City, she struck (or was struck by) an iceberg in the north Atlantic Ocean, about 375 miles south of Newfoundland. Of the estimated 2224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1500 died, making the calamity one of the deadliest commercial peacetime maritime disasters in modern history.

Morgan Robertson, pictured at right, was not one of the 800 or so survivors of the shipwreck. He never sailed on the Titanic. Indeed, he may never have heard of the ship until he saw the newspaper reports on that fateful day. Mr Robertson was an American author of short stories and novels, and the self-proclaimed inventor of the periscope. One of his works, virtually unknown until after the event, was a novella, published in 1898 -- 14 years before the event -- called Futility or the Wreck of the Titan.

After the Titanic sank, some said that Morgan Robertson was something of an amateur mystic. Others said he must have been clairvoyant. Although no other predictions or "premonitions" were ever attributed to him, the similarities between his fictional SS Titan, which struck an iceberg and sank, and the ill-fated Titanic are simply amazing. The authors of The Riddle of the Titanic have put them in tabular form, which Ed. has recreated for us.

"It would be very satisfying," the authors write, "to be able to say whether any of the key figures in the Titanic saga knew of this Awful Warning before the event it "foresaw", but we found no such indications. Walt recommends: The Riddle of the Titanic, by Robin Gardiner and Dan van der Vat, Orion Books, 1996. For an in-depth study, the book is eminently readable and highly recommendable.