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In reference to the RMS Titanic, which sank on Monday 15th April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg while on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic, the noun Titanic is used of something likened to the RMS Titanic in being vast and supposedly indestructible yet heading inevitably towards disaster.
This use of the noun Titanic often occurs in extended metaphors. The following, for example, is from Pay Hikes Hide Reality, by Andrew F. Blake, published in the Boston Sunday Globe (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) of Sunday 22nd June 1969 [page 73, column 8]:
Everyone wants to be on the luxury liner of prosperity, but the rate of inflation, nearly 8 percent, lies ahead like an iceberg.
The liner “Prosperity” could be an economic “Titanic.”
Interestingly, the noun Titanic came to be used in the phrase political Titanic as early as May 1912—these are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of this phrase that I have found:
1-: From The Mountain Eagle (Jasper, Alabama, USA) of Wednesday 1st May 1912 [page 4, column 2]:
Truman H. Aldrich, postmaster at Birmingham, telegraphed Hon. P. M. Long from Washington Saturday, that Taft only lacked 87 delegates out of the 400 yet to be elected of having enough to be nominated on first ballot. Mr. Aldrich may be counting his chickens before they are hatched. Evidently he is counting that Taft will win all the contested delegations, which is a thing not at all sure. Even the Southern office-holding delegations can not yet be counted sure for Taft—for they are great hands to be first in taking to life boats when a political Titanic is about to sink. Let ’em get a hint that an iceberg has been struck and the Southern delegates wont [sic] wait for “women and children first.”
2-: From an article about the reactions to the proposed appropriation bill for the District of Columbia, published in The Evening Star (Washington, District of Columbia, USA) of Thursday 2nd May 1912 [page 11, column 2]:
That the bill by which, if it should become a law, employes in the classified service of the government who reside in the District of Columbia would be dismissed on reaching the age of sixty-five years, is a staggering blow to the basic principles of civil service, and a direct stab at the District itself, is the belief of M. F. O’Donoghue, secretary of the United States Civil Service Retirement Association. Discussing the measure today Mr. O’Donoghue said:
“[…]
“For my part, I would regard the passage of this bill in its present shape as little short of a political Titanic disaster.”
3-: From Life (New York City, New York, USA) of Thursday 16th May 1912 [page 1013, column 3]:
There is very little personal dislike of Mr. Taft, but there is a great deal of impatience with him, and a desperate longing among folks whose eyes are alight with a celestial vision to have a candidate who seems a bit handier with his wings.
Mighty queer company, these aspiring people find themselves in, and a great many of them realize it, and realize also the extraordinary penumbra which adorns their cometary leader in his astonishing flight. They don’t like the penumbra much, but still their wagon continues to be hitched to the only star in sight whose velocities seem available.
[…]
The political Titanic seems unsinkable, but isn’t.
It settled down perceptibly in Massachusetts.
Even its Southern bulkheads may turn out to be leaky.
You can’t build them so as not to feel it when they hit a meteor.
4-: From The Evening Telegraph (Charters Towers, Queensland, Australia) of Friday 24th May 1912 [page 2, column 3]:
CAUSES OF OUR FAILURE.
III.Two such gaping holes as the Strike and the Referendum bungle were quite sufficient in themselves to sink the finest political Titanic. And there were of course also the various minor leakages to which every party is liable.
—Cf. also the phrase to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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