Great collection of adventure, ghosts, shipwrecks, and insurance scam barratry.
Morgan Robertson, in his story, THE WRECK OF THE TITAN, exactly predicts and describes the sinking of the Titanic more than a decade before the actual event. James Cameron, here’s to you, your submarine, and the deepest abyss.
The Titanic allegedly sunk in 1912. Mr. Robertson wrote his book in 1898. He describes a great steam ship, the biggest and fastest of the day called the Titan. A tremendous craft traveling at twenty five knots from Liverpool to America. It strikes an iceberg in the Atlantic, capsizes on her port side, not enough life boats to save the two-thousand souls on-board, Myra and Rowland are stranded on the ice.
Add in the Lloyds of London underwriter, Mr. Meyer, and you have what appears to be a perfect predictive program. A great insurance ripoff program by the pentagram church.
Nothing new under the sun.
This book had me singing sea shantys. You and me on a three masted schooner. We’re looking over the railing into the wine dark sea.
You point to something submerged under the waves.
It’s a ghost ship sailing on our broadside, full of zombie pirates.
I grab your hand and make way for the forecastle. We find the cargo hold full of luxury automobiles. We make out in the backseat of a Model T. Heavy petting, foggy windows.
We find the pirates smoking hasheesh and drinking sangria from an oaken barrel. We join them in the saloon. Your hair is a frizzy nest of spectacular-spectacular. The pirates immediately fall in love with you.
We are saved.
Strange Tales of the High Seas by Osie Turner, Morgan Robertson, William Hope Hodgson Book Review
My highlights and annotations:
Strange Tales of the High Seas by Osie Turner, Morgan Robertson, William Hope Hodgson
Book last read: 2025-02-10 18:19:27
Percentage read: 100%
Chapter 0: THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT by William Hope Hodgson (1907)
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Chapter progress: 4.53%
Highlight: I desired to spare her all unnecessary terror.
Notes: Romance.
Chapter 2: FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS by Morgan Robertson (1913)
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Chapter progress: 7.85%
Highlight: But the answer is simple. Most big craft are built of oak or hard pine, and fastened together with iron spikes and bolts—sixty tons at least to a three-hundred-ton schooner. After a year or two this hard, heavy wood becomes water-soaked, and, with the iron bolts and spikes, is heavier than water, and will sink when the hold is flooded.
Notes: Why wooden boats sink? Good question.
Chapter 2: FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS by Morgan Robertson (1913)
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Chapter progress: 7.85%
Highlight: she was a Yankee craft, and there was not a life buoy or belt on board;
Notes: personal flotation device inspection. yankee scam
Chapter 2: FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS by Morgan Robertson (1913)
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Chapter progress: 8.16%
Highlight: . It was only about six feet long, but it had a mouth like a bulldog, and a row of spikes along its back that could have sawed a man’s leg off.
Notes: Sea serpent.
Chapter 2: FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS by Morgan Robertson (1913)
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Chapter progress: 8.46%
Highlight: something cold, slimy, and firm touched my hand—something in the water, but which I could not see.
Notes: Hows about a swim?
Chapter 2: FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS by Morgan Robertson (1913)
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Chapter progress: 8.76%
Highlight: ‘He was not drowned,’ said Herr Smidt. ‘He was sucked dry, like a lemon. Perhaps in his whole body there is not an ounce of blood, nor lymph, nor fluid of any kind.
Notes: Vampire sea serpent.
Chapter 2: FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS by Morgan Robertson (1913)
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Chapter progress: 8.76%
Highlight: There we were, eleven men on a water-logged hulk, adrift on a heaving, greasy sea, with a dark-red sun showing through a muddy sky above, and an invisible thing forward that might seize any of us at any moment it chose, in the water or out; for Frank had been caught and dragged down.
Notes: jaws five
Chapter 2: FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS by Morgan Robertson (1913)
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Chapter progress: 9.06%
Highlight: for while we could not see the creature, we could feel it—and a knife is better than a gun in a hand-to-hand fight.
Chapter 2: FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS by Morgan Robertson (1913)
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Chapter progress: 9.06%
Highlight: Light, like wave motion, ends at a certain depth, you know; und we have over twelve thousand feet beneath us. At that depth dere is absolute darkness, but we know that creatures live down dere, und fight, und eat, und die.
Notes: Your depths are unfathomable.
Chapter 2: FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS by Morgan Robertson (1913)
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Chapter progress: 11.18%
Highlight: He had a Wimshurst machine—to generate a blue spark,
Notes: Ask Circe. https://www.hsm.ox.ac.uk/wimshurst-machine
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 12.08%
Highlight: for alcohol, up to a certain point, intensifies the consciousness, focuses the intellectual powers, sharpens observation;
Notes: Fact check.
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 12.08%
Highlight: positive worship—devouring tide, a lust and fever in the soul.
Notes: I want you.
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 12.39%
Highlight: something uncommon was astir.
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 12.39%
Highlight: Lord of the Lonely Places,
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 12.69%
Highlight: A secret lust in the man’s heart, born of the sea, and of his intense admiration of the pagan gods called a light into his eye not altogether pleasant.
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 13.29%
Highlight: No dying in bed or fading out from old age, but to plunge full-blooded and alive into the great Body of the god who has deigned to descend and fetch you…”
Notes: Blaze of glory.
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 13.29%
Highlight: materialisation seances,” where physical bodies were alleged to be built up out of the emanations of the medium and the sitters.
Notes: Sit with me.
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 13.6%
Highlight: are simply means of losing one’s self by temporary ecstasy in the God of one’s choice—the God one has worshipped all one’s life—of being partially absorbed into his being.
Notes: Rites and ceremonies.
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 14.2%
Highlight: His deep, volcanic enthusiasm and belief provided the channel.
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 14.2%
Highlight: for an extraordinary atmosphere of enthusiasm that was almost splendour pulsed about him, yet vilely close to something that suggested terror!
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 14.5%
Highlight: All teach sacrifice, and, without exception, all seek final union by absorption into their Deity.
Notes: All religions.
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 14.8%
Highlight: Thetis
Notes: Sea nymph.
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 14.8%
Highlight: His voice roared forth over those moonlit sand-dunes and out towards the line of heavy surf ten yards
Chapter 3: THE SEA FIT by Algernon Blackwood (1910)
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Chapter progress: 15.11%
Highlight: It was articulate—a message from the sea—an announcement—a thunderous warning of approach.
Chapter 4: MAN OVERBOARD! by F. Marion Crawford (1903)
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Chapter progress: 17.22%
Highlight: I heard them talking about a girl.
Chapter 4: MAN OVERBOARD! by F. Marion Crawford (1903)
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Chapter progress: 18.13%
Highlight: do you think I am the sort of man to think I hear things where there isn’t anything to hear, or to think I see things when there is nothing
Notes: Good question.
Chapter 4: MAN OVERBOARD! by F. Marion Crawford (1903)
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Chapter progress: 18.73%
Highlight: When all was quiet, and she was hove to, coming to and falling off her four points as regularly as a pendulum, and the helm lashed a little to the lee,
Notes: I’m sailing!
Chapter 4: MAN OVERBOARD! by F. Marion Crawford (1903)
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Chapter progress: 20.24%
Highlight: He wasn’t trying to make trouble. He was in trouble.
Notes: ¡!
Chapter 4: MAN OVERBOARD! by F. Marion Crawford (1903)
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Chapter progress: 21.45%
Highlight: Navigation ain’t everything, nor seamanship, either. You’ve got to have it in you, if you mean to get there.
Notes: Getting there.
Chapter 5: THE GRAIN SHIP by Morgan Robertson (1914)
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Chapter progress: 27.49%
Highlight: like the sense of recognition that comes to you when you view a new scene that you know you have never seen before.
Notes: Muses
Chapter 5: THE GRAIN SHIP by Morgan Robertson (1914)
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Chapter progress: 28.4%
Highlight: But I’ve lost my face. I’m another man. I don’t know myself.”
Chapter 7: I
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Chapter progress: 34.14%
Highlight: He remembered that the aromatic gum of the wild frankincense with which they had parcelled the seams had hung on the buckets in great sluggish gouts, obedient to a different compulsion; oil was different again, and so were juices and balsams. Only quicksilver (perhaps the heavy and motionless sea put him in mind of quicksilver) seemed obedient to no law…. Why was it so?
Notes: Aromatics and quicksilver.
Chapter 8: II
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Chapter progress: 35.65%
Highlight: the broad two-tailed pennant with the Virgin and Child embroidered upon it
Notes: Virgin and child pennant.
Chapter 8: II
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Chapter progress: 35.65%
Highlight: Upon an harp and an instrument of ten strings … let Heaven and Earth praise Thy Name!
Notes: Jam band.
Chapter 9: III
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Chapter progress: 37.16%
Highlight: We are not conscious in a dream that we are playing a game the beginning and end of which are in ourselves.
Notes: It’s all a game.
Chapter 9: III
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Chapter progress: 37.76%
Highlight: He knew her as those already sinking into the grave know things, miraculously, completely, accepting Life’s impossibilities with a nodded “Of course.
Notes: Of course.
Chapter 10: THE GHOST PIRATES by William Hope Hodgson (1909)
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Chapter progress: 38.97%
Highlight: Strange as the glimmer of the ghastly light That shines from some vast crest of wave at night.
Notes: Great work.
Chapter 11: Chapter I – The Figure Out of the Sea
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Chapter progress: 40.48%
Highlight: Too many shadows!” I said. “What on earth do you mean?
Notes: Too many.
Chapter 11: Chapter I – The Figure Out of the Sea
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Chapter progress: 40.79%
Highlight: We’d ‘ave our gran’mothers an’ all the rest of our petticoated relash’ns comin’ to sea, if ’twere always like this,” he remarked, reflectively—indicating, with a sweep of his pipe and hand, the calmness of the sea and sky.
Notes: It’s a fine day at sea!
Chapter 15: Chapter V – The End of Williams
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Chapter progress: 48.04%
Highlight: It’s too much like a damned fairy tale.”
Chapter 16: Chapter VI – Another Man to the Wheel
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Chapter progress: 50.45%
Highlight: It came over the lee rail—up out of the sea,
Notes: it came from the sea.
Chapter 16: Chapter VI – Another Man to the Wheel
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Chapter progress: 50.76%
Highlight: I must have someone to talk to, or I shall go dotty.”
Chapter 16: Chapter VI – Another Man to the Wheel
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Chapter progress: 51.06%
Highlight: You don’t know what a state you put me into, what with my being certain that I had seen it and then you being so jolly positive that there had been nothing.
Notes: I know you see it too.
Chapter 16: Chapter VI – Another Man to the Wheel
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Chapter progress: 51.66%
Highlight: Well, I’ve formed a bit of a theory, that seems wise one minute, and cracked the next. Of course, it’s as likely to be all wrong; but it’s the only thing that seems to me to fit in with all the beastly things we’ve had lately.
Notes: The money is fake nonsense.
Chapter 16: Chapter VI – Another Man to the Wheel
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Chapter progress: 51.66%
Highlight: Lord knows what’s in the sea.
Notes: Unfathomable depths.
Chapter 16: Chapter VI – Another Man to the Wheel
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Chapter progress: 51.96%
Highlight: Where do they come from?
Notes: Good question.
Chapter 18: Chapter VIII – After the Coming of the Mist
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Chapter progress: 56.19%
Highlight: You know, you’re getting to fancy things too much!
Chapter 19: Chapter IX – The Man Who Cried for Help
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Chapter progress: 59.52%
Highlight: I wondered whether he would begin to comprehend their significance—their beastly, sinister significance.
Notes: Fake money, badge, and guns.
Chapter 20: Chapter X – Hands That Plucked
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Chapter progress: 61.63%
Highlight: downright desperate with funk,
Notes: Desperate funk.
Chapter 22: Chapter XII – The Council
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Chapter progress: 66.16%
Highlight: I think you’ve sense enough to hold your tongue.”
Notes: Negative.
Chapter 24: Chapter XIV – The Ghost Ships
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Chapter progress: 68.28%
Highlight: It can’t be the sort of existence we should call life.
Notes: Biometric registration stickers.
Chapter 24: Chapter XIV – The Ghost Ships
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Chapter progress: 69.79%
Highlight: There was something unaccountably strange in the air that night.
Chapter 24: Chapter XIV – The Ghost Ships
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Chapter progress: 70.09%
Highlight: I have only a confused notion of a wet glistening Something, and two vile eyes.
Chapter 29: CHAPTER I
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Chapter progress: 76.44%
Highlight: Two brass bands, two orchestras, and a theatrical company entertained the passengers during waking hours;
Notes: On the ship
Chapter 31: CHAPTER III
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Chapter progress: 79.15%
Highlight: May the curse of God light on you and your cheese-knife, you brass-bound murderers.
Notes: Cheese knife curse.
Chapter 32: CHAPTER IV
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Chapter progress: 80.06%
Highlight: But I also know something of admiralty law; that from my prison cell I can send you and your first officer to the gallows.
Notes: Corporate police renegades.
Chapter 34: CHAPTER VI
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Chapter progress: 81.87%
Highlight: Why is it—that failure to hold the affections of one among the millions of women who live, and love, can outweigh every blessing in life, and turn a man’s nature into a hell, to consume him?
Notes: Good question.
Chapter 35: CHAPTER VII
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Chapter progress: 83.38%
Highlight: She would have backed off, and, slightly down by the head, finished the voyage at reduced speed, to rebuild on insurance money, and benefit, largely, in the end, by the consequent advertising of her indestructibility.
Notes: The Titan
Chapter 37: CHAPTER IX
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Chapter progress: 86.4%
Highlight: Whatever may be the nature of the causes at work beyond our mental vision, one fact is indubitably proven—that the qualities of mercy, goodness, justice, play no part in the governing scheme.
Chapter 37: CHAPTER IX
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Chapter progress: 86.71%
Highlight: Is not this a physiological experiment?
Notes: Yes.
Chapter 40: CHAPTER XII
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Chapter progress: 90.03%
Highlight: Barratry, as I understand it, is the unlawful act of a captain or crew at sea, causing damage or loss;
Chapter 42: CHAPTER XIV
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Chapter progress: 93.66%
Highlight: the man who had fought and conquered a hungry polar bear was dragged through the streets like a sick animal by a New York policeman. For such is the stultifying effect of a civilized environment.
Chapter 48: When Life and Art Collide
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Chapter progress: 97.58%
Highlight: Morgan Robertson’s “The Wreck of the Titan” is most famous for its uncanny resemblance to the real life Titanic—except it was written over a decade before the Titanic sank. How is that possible?