Strange Titanic Conspiracies
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Last Show with David Cooper. Procrastinate your life away with us. I'm flying, Jack. Did the Titanic sink? Was it an inside job? There are some wild, wacky, and out there conspiracies about the boat, the ship, the steamship, whatever it's called. And in these strange and uncertain times, what better to discuss than Titanic conspiracies? And who better to discuss it with than Nathan Radke, a professor of conspiracy studies at Humber Polytechnic. Check out his podcast, The Uncover Up Conspiracy Cast. Nathan, welcome to the show. Ahoy. Did you watch the Titanic movie in the late 90s, early 2000s?
What strange conspiracies surround the sinking of the Titanic?
I didn't watch it until much, much later. So I missed out on sort of that big pop culture moment, but I have seen it.
OK, and you have painted somebody like one of your never mind. How wild do these conspiracy theories get? Do people think the Titanic is at a bar with Jerry Garcia, Tupac Shakur and Elvis? Like how wild are some of these? Do they think the Titanic is still out there in the ocean?
Well, the one that I hear most often from people, and the one that probably sounds the most ridiculous at first, is the idea that the Titanic, despite what we saw in the film, didn't sink. That film was in a documentary? I mean, it was close enough. But this idea originates with a British author named Robin Gardner, who wasn't claiming that there was no shipwreck at all that night, but that the ship that sank wasn't the Titanic and that it didn't hit an iceberg. So instead, and this has got a lot of moving parts in it, The ship that sank was secretly the Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic.
Okay, but didn't the Olympic sail after the Titanic sank? And didn't people go on it and buy tickets and didn't it have like a full ship life or whatever? Yes, but that ship was actually the Titanic.
Okay, but if it sank- Let me walk you through it.
Oh boy, okay.
Okay, so the Olympic was built first, launched a couple years before the Titanic. But then in 1911, there was an accident in which the Olympic and a British Navy cruiser collided, causing a lot of damage to the Olympic. And so after an investigation by the British Navy, the Navy determined that the crash wasn't the Navy's fault. That meant that the owners of the damaged Olympic, the White Star Line, they wouldn't get any kind of insurance settlement to cover the damages. So now the White Star Line had an extremely damaged ship that was likely beyond repair and no insurance payout to make up for the loss. So according to Gardner, they hatched a plan to quietly and secretly rebrand the damaged Olympic as the Titanic, switch all the names around, and then the rebranded Olympic, which was now called the Titanic, would be sent out on her first voyage and deliberately sunk for the insurance money.
Okay, my brain isn't working here. Olympic gets damaged. Yep. Olympic gets rebranded as the Titanic. Yep. Titanic gets rebranded as the Olympic. Yep. Yep. Damaged Olympic goes out there as the Titanic. Yeah. Bring it home. And gets sunk. Iceberg straight ahead, but maybe like a bomb or maybe just like, I don't know, whatever. Who knows how they did it? Or maybe you do know how they did it.
Well, I know what Gardner says happened because this meant that the White Star Line would be able to collect the insurance money and they'd still have a brand new undamaged ship in the real Titanic, which would still be in port and rebranded as the Olympic.
All right. Some guy writing a book about it who I've never heard of says it's true. That's all the evidence I need.
Did the Titanic really sink or was it a cover-up?
What's wrong with this conspiracy? Or also, I guess the why is money. But let's try to poke holes in it, I guess.
I mean, there is, I guess, a motivation there. At first, you're like, OK, maybe it seems reasonable. What Gardner said was that they would sail the Olympic slash Titanic out to sea. They'd open up a bunch of valves and they'd slowly allow seawater to leak in. And it sounds psychopathic, but there would apparently be rescue ships positioned in the area to pick up the passengers and crews. There wouldn't be a big loss of life.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:44
2
What strange conspiracies surround the sinking of the Titanic?
0:44–3:30
3
Did the Titanic really sink or was it a cover-up?
3:30–4:21
4
How did the theory of the Titanic being switched with the Olympic originate?
4:21–12:54
5
What evidence supports the conspiracy theory about the Titanic?
12:54–17:38
6
What are the flaws in the Titanic Olympic switch theory?
17:38–18:07
Speakers
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