Most people would think twice before buying a boat named Titanic II. And sure enough, when Briton Mark Wilkinson took the 16-foot (4.8 Meter) cabin cruiser out for its maiden voyage, it promptly sank.

"If it wasn't for the harbormaster I would have gone down with the Titanic," Wilkinson, who had to be fished out of the sea at West Bay harbor in Dorset, told local media.

Wilkinson, in his 40s, had only recently bought the boat and brought it by road from his home in Birmingham, England for its first outing. He rechristened it as the Titanic II, and it behaved on its maiden voyage exactly as one might expect from a vessel with that name.

After a successful fishing trip, things started to go wrong when he entered the harbor and the boat began taking on water. Wilkinson was forced to abandon ship and pictures showed him clinging to a rail before he was rescued.

According to the Dorset Echo, the coast guard officers and the harbormaster spotted Wilkinson un-ironically clinging to the bow of his rapidly sinking metaphor for hubris. They helped moor the ship, and Wilkinson climbed out of the water unhurt.

The harbormaster speculated that the breach in the Titanic II's fiberglass hull was caused when an old repair job came apart.

"It's all a bit embarrassing," Wilkinson told the Sun newspaper, "I'm fed up with people asking me if I hit an iceberg."

One eyewitness said: "It wasn't a very big boat I think an ice cube could have sunk it!"

Now, c'mon! Rechristening a boat with a name like that is as good as sealing your own fate. Certainly I feel sorry for him, but I'm not all that surprised that it sank on its maiden voyage.

Perhaps there is a very important lesson that can be learned here. Have you ever noticed that names of certain devastating hurricanes like, Andrew, Camille and Katrina get retired and never used again? This is also why airlines no longer use flight numbers that are associated with plane crashes. Notice you don't see any aircrafts called the Hindenburg II, now, do you?

Sometimes it's better to just let tragic history stay in the past and don't try to give it too many opportunities to repeat itself.

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