Did the Titanic REALLY sink?

The world was startled in 1912 when the Titanic sank. With the ruthless destruction of such a technically advanced ship, the limits of human ingenuity were ruthlessly exposed. However, a rumour that has been circulating online in recent years, most recently on Reddit, raises the question of whether the Titanic actually sank.

We are aware. It sounds crazy. Keep with us, though.

Everyone appears to agree on one fact: on April 15, 1912, a ship actually did go down in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, killing almost 1,500 people on board. The conspiracy idea merely asserts that the Titanic wasn't the technological marvel that its parent firm, the White Star Line, had represented it to be.

Instead, the White Star Line changed the ships it was using for the Southampton to New York trip, and what was advertised as the Titanic was actually the Olympic, an older vessel. Additionally, the crash may have been the result of a botched insurance scheme, according to the conspiracy theory.

The Golden Age of the Big Ship: J.P. Morgan

There was fierce competition for the British White Star Line both domestically and internationally. Locally, it had a heated rivalry with the Cunard Steamship Company, Ltd., which had launched the Lusitania and Mauretania, the two largest passenger ships in the world at the time, in 1906–07.

White Star Line engaged in a massive ship battle in an effort to outdo the Lusitania and its companion. The firm had experience in such conflicts, but the top speed of Cunard's Lusitania and Mauretania was superior to that of White Star's so-called "Big Four" ships. The business had more financial support this time.

White Star was acquired by the International Mercantile Marine Co. (IMM), a holding firm backed by renowned investor J.P. Morgan, in 1902. White Star CEO J. Bruce Ismay started building the Olympic-class ships with Morgan's approval. Olympic-class ships would surpass Cunard ships in terms of size and luxury even if they couldn't match the speed of the Lusitania. Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic were the three vessels that were commissioned.

As the name of the line, the Olympic was the first ship to be constructed and was regarded as the leading ship. Its initial voyage was heavily publicised, and its first several trips were resounding triumphs. But after only five trips, the ship experienced major problems.

On September 20, 1911, the Olympic made an abrupt turn as it approached the Hawke, a military ship. Unprepared, the two ships collided. Despite being seriously hurt, the Olympic managed to limp back to port. The White Star Line would eventually be found guilty of the incident after a trial.

The Conspiracy Begins

Everyone agrees that the information above is true. Where the pathways diverge is at the Olympic crash.

Conspiracy theorists assert that the Olympic was a financial failure following the catastrophe. Due to the lawsuit, insurance would not pay for repairs, and the boat was not earning any money while it was parked by the docks. The firm decided to make a change, renaming its damaged older ship the Titanic while renaming its newly constructed second ship Olympic.

The real Olympic (now clandestinely operating as the Titanic) would eventually be scuttled in an accident from which the White Star Line would be able to recover an insurance settlement befitting a brand-new ship—all the while the ship that was initially built as the Titanic would have survived. An iceberg was the only thing that derailed the plan.

Other conspiracy theorists say that J.P. Morgan was behind the switch, wanting to take his adversaries onto a subpar ship and drown them.

Both theories have their supporters, who point to various hints. For example, the Titanic refused to allow a public inspection before sailing for fear that experts would mistake it for the Olympic. Portholes are another option. A recent, well-read Reddit thread looks at images of the Titanic being built and the Titanic on her maiden voyage and discovers that the second image has been modified and is now disturbingly near to the Olympic.

There are plenty further details. For instance, different assertions allude to the idea that the Olympic, rather than the original Titanic, is at the bottom of the ocean.

The Conspiracy Doesn’t Add Up

Titanic researchers Steve Hall and Bruce Beveridge have published a book on the subject, Titanic or Olympic: Which Ship Sank? They’ve also helped to write other books of Titanic history, including Titanic: The Ship Magnificent. The two take the porthole argument straight on.

“The Olympic,” they write, “like the Titanic, was fitted originally with the same 14-porthole arrangement on the port side of her forecastle, but two additional portholes were later fitted; they were there in March 1912.”The reason behind the transition has also received considerable attention from historian Mark Chirnside. He looked into the insurance defence in 2005, which asserted that the ship would be deliberately sunk in order to collect insurance payments. Ismay said, "The Titanic 'cost $7,500,000'—and was insured 'for $5,000,000, I understand.'" The American Vice President of the IMM, Philip A. S. Franklin, who confirmed that the insurance policy was for $5 million, supports this.

If a conspiracy existed, Chirnside argues, "one would expect that the insurance policy would have been changed to cover the entire value of the ship." White Star could only hope to collect two-thirds of the ship's value as things stood. When closely analysed, none of the Olympic/Titanic comparisons can match the extraordinary effort required for the changeover because the two ships were not precisely the same. The Titanic was altered based on the company's prior experience with the Olympic and had a "unique café and enlarged á la carte restaurant," according to Chirnside. The Titanic's unique construction identifying number (CIN), which is 401, has reportedly been found amid wreckage, according to the Associated Press. This is latest evidence that the story wasn't a misguided cover-up.

Not only that. Chirnside asserts that it "is simply impossible to pass off a one-year-old ship for a new one," citing a number of minute differences between the two, such as "additional steel plates that were fitted to the bedplates of Olympic's engines," added in 1911 and discovered during subsequent inspections in the 1920s and 1930s. No such plates were discovered during the British Board of Trade's investigation of the Titanic.

It's not that the Titanic or her owner J.P. Morgan were above suspicion—Morgan shown incredible influence over the United States during his lifetime, almost single-handedly resolving the Banking Crisis of 1907. (In actuality, IMM would become the lone Morgan financial collapse after the Titanic sank, declaring bankruptcy two years later.)

However, there was tangible proof in that episode that Morgan was changing the monetary system. The historians' arguments are not supported by any hard proof of the Titanic plot.