A Night to Remember

It’s a surprise that in her latest editorial, Peggy Noonan gives readers a respite by not blaming Trump for the recent Titan tragedy.

In the WSJ, Ms. Noonan tells a story through Walter Lord, author of “A Night to Remember,” published in 1955.

In the forward to Lord’s book on how the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, the first thing he notes is that “in 1898 a struggling writer named Morgan Robertson wrote a short novel about a fabulous Atlantic Ocean liner carrying wealthy, self-satisfied people that went down one cold April night after hitting an iceberg.”

The Titanic’s Maiden Voyage

“The [Titanic] was 66,000 tons displacement; Robertson’s [liner] was 70,000. The real ship was 882.5 feet long; the fictional one was 800.” Both vessels could carry some 3,000 people, both could make 24 to 25 knots, and both carried only a fraction of the lifeboats needed if something bad happened.”

But little matter, because both (ships) were called “unsinkable.”

Do you know, asks Ms. Noonan, what Robertson called his fictional ship?

The Titan.