After the tragedy of the Titanic in 1912, the book was republished by various printers and several more reprints since then have claimed to be the original work. Jack W. Hannah in Mansfield, Ohio printed the only true, genuine reprint of the original in 1975. All the others have added details to make the "prophecy" more compelling — as if the similarities were not already weird enough.

Some believe that Robertson did in fact possess some kind of extrasensory perception that enabled him to tell the story of the R.M.S. Titanic 14 years prior to the sinking. A good portion of readers from Robertson's time and the present do not actually credit the author with the talents of a great writer. In fact, Robertson was poor most of his life and no evidence supports that his situation changed after the real-life tragedy took place. He died in 1915 of a drug overdose at the age of 53.

Oddly enough, one of his other books has some mysterious parallels with a major world event — see if you can guess which one. This particular book, The Submarine Destroyer, was written in 1905 and dealt with a futuristic war between the United States and Japan. In the book, Japan carries out sneak-attacks on the United States. In the fictional story, the United States entered into war with Japan during the month of December and the war was fought with aircraft carrying what he termed "sun bombs." These sun bombs exploded with such ferocity that they emitted a flash of blinding light and destroyed whole cities.