Titanic Conspiracy
HOW BIG was the Titanic?
It was 882 feet 9 inches long with a maximum width of 92 feet 6 inches. The total height from the base of the keel to the top of the bridge was 104 feet. Titanic had 10 decks (excluding the top of the officers quarters), and eight of them were for passenger use. The Titanic was equipped with three main engines, each driving a propeller. The passenger facilities on the Titanic aimed to meet the highest standards of luxury. The Titanic could accommodate 833 First class passengers, 614 Second class passengers, 1006 Third class passengers, making the total passenger capacity of 2453. In addition to the passenger capacity, there was an additional capacity for the crew, and that exceeded 900.
What conspiracies are there about the Titanic?
1. There’s a theory that the ship that sank was actually the Olympic instead of the Titanic, this is one of the most elaborate and controversial theories out there. It was advanced by Robin Gardiner in his book, “Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank?”. Gardiner draws on several coincidences and events leading up to the sinking of the Titanic. IT concludes that the ship that sank was actually Titanic’s sister ship, Olympic, disguised as the Titanic. This was done as an insurance scam by its owners, the International Mercantile Marine Group. That group was controlled by JP Morgan. Several researchers and authors had a problem with this theory. British historian states that “since the sister ships had significant interior architectural and design differences, switching them secretly in a week would be nearly impossibly from a practical standpoint. A switch would also not be economically worthwhile since the ship’s owners could have simply damaged the ship while docked (for instance, by setting a fire) and collected the insurance money from that “accident”, which “would have been far less severe, and infinitely less stupid, than sailing her out into the middle of the Atlantic with thousands of people, and their luggage, on board, and ramming her into an iceberg.”
2. There is a theory that the Titanic was sunk on purpose to eliminate the opposition to the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank. Some of the most wealthy men in the world were on the Titanic on her maiden voyage. Some of them include John Jacob Astor IV, Isidor Straus, and Benjamin Guggenheim. They were allegedly opposed to the creation of a US central bank. There is no evidence of this-Astor and Guggenheim never even spoke publicly about the subject, while Straus spoke in favor of the subject. All three men died during the sinking. The main reason behind this thought is that Morgan planned on traveling on the Titanic. He attended the Titanic’s launching in 1911, and he booked a personal suite aboard the ship that had its own private promenade deck and a bath equipped with a specially designed cigar holder. Instead, he canceled the trip on the maiden voyage of Titanic. He chose to stay at the French resort of Aix-les-Bains. His alleged last minute cancellation has fuelled speculation among conspiracy theorists that he knew the ship was going to sink. This theory has been refuted by Titanic experts George Behe, Don Lynch, and Ray Lepein. They all provide their own alternative reason as to why Morgan canceled at the last minute.
3. Closed watertight doors: This theory suggests that if these doors would have remained opened, the Titanic would have settled on an even keel, therefore, remained afloat long enough for rescue ships to arrive. This theory has been rebutted for two reasons. First, the first four compartments were naturally watertight, thus it was impossible to lower the concentration of water in the bow significantly. Secondly, historians and studies have shown by calculations that any significant amount of water after boiler number 4 would have resulted in the capsizing of the Titanic, which would have taken place 30 minutes earlier than the Titanic would have actually sank. Even more so, the lighting would have gone out about 70 minutes after the collision with the iceberg due to the flooding of the boiler rooms. It was also analyzed in the hypothetical case that there weren't any bulkheads at all in the ship. The vessel would have capsized about 70 minutes before the actual time of the sinking and lighting would have been lost about 40 minutes after the collision.
4. A fire in a coal bunker: A fire began in one of Titanic’s coal bunkers about 10 days prior to the ship’s departure. It continued to burn for several days into the voyage. Fires occurred regularly on steamboats due to spontaneous combustion of the coal. The fires had to be extinguished with fire hoses, by moving the coal on top to another bunker and by removing the burning coal and feeding it into the furnace. This led some authors to theorize that the fire made the problem worse when Titanic collided with the iceberg. This is because the fire is believed to reduce the structural integrity of the hull and a critical bulkhead. Senan Molony, a writer and editor, had suggested that attempts to extinguish the fire may have been the reason why Titanic was steaming full speed prior to the collision, even though there were ice warnings. Most experts do disagree with that. Samuel Halpe, a systems engineer and author, concluded that “the bunker fire would not have weakened the watertight bulkhead sufficiently to cause it to collapse.”
5. A mummy’s curse doomed the Titanic: One of the passengers who went down with the Titanic was William Stead. He was a British editor who subscribed to early 20th century spiritualism. He had spent the past several years claiming that a cursed mummy was causing mysterious destruction and mayhem all around London. While he was on board, Stead happily repeated his tale of the mummy’s curse to other passengers. After the ship sank, a survivor repeated Stead’s tale to the New York World, and other media picked it up. The very next month, The Washington Post ran this headline: “Ghost of the Titanic, Vengeance of Hoodoo Mummy Followed Man Who Wrote Its History.” In other versions of the story, the mummy was actually on board the Titanic because the British Museum had sold it to an American who was shipping it home, Snopes reports. But the real truth is that the “unlucky mummy” is still at the British Museum. No mummy was ever loaded onto the ship.
6. The ship’s number read “No Pope” backwards: One myth stated that Catholic employees of Harland and Wolff, the Belfast company that build the Titanic, were distressed that the ship’s number, 3909 04, seemed to say “No Pope” when viewed in a mirror. Was this a sign of bad luck? The late Titanic historian Walter Lord thought no. He wrote that he received letters from people in Ireland relaying this theory in the mid 1950’s. Yet as he pointed out in his book, there was no such number ever written on the Titanic. This still does not stop tourists from asking about this myth when visiting Titanic museums.
