Ninety-eight years ago today, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank.

My great-grandmother, Eugenia Ash Tuttle (that's her in the picture, circa 1890) used to claim she had psychic powers, and the example that was remembered by her grandchildren and passed along to my generation -- intriguing me so much that I'm presently researching her life and times -- was that back in 1912 a precognitive dream had caused her to change her plans, give up her ticket on the Titanic and take another ship home from Europe.

Well, Eugenia was certainly fond of travel, especially during the years she resided in Chicago with her second husband, Clarence Tuttle, and she did go to Europe that year. Thanks to records at ancestry.com, I was able to find her on the passenger list of the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm, which sailed out of Southampton on March 24, bound for New York. So, if Genie really did have a precognitive dream, it must have come awfully early, and got her back to America well before the Titanic sailed, not afterwards, as one might expect. Also, she habitually sailed on a German line, one which advertised in the Chicago Blue Book, and I'm guessing she purchased round-trip tickets, so, although it made a good story, it strikes me as nothing more than postcognitive hindsight.

Understandable, though, as she would not have been long home when the news about the Titanic shook the world; how many friends and relatives must have exclaimed at how lucky she was to have taken a different ship home, until, perhaps, she began to feel there was something more than "luck" involved, something more like Fate...

Tags: titanic; precognition; psychic powers; f
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