Chapter 1: 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?
Chapter 2: 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.
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Chapter 3: 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. But then Gardner says that what happened was the Olympic accidentally struck one of the rescue vessels and that caused the Olympic to sink very quickly, preventing the planned rescue. And his evidence as such is just that the Olympic and the Titanic were sister ships, so they look kind of similar.
And he said it would be really easy to switch out anything that had the Olympics name engraved on it and replace it with stuff from the Titanic. Problem.
Chapter 4: How did the theory of the Titanic being switched with the Olympic originate?
Dressing up one boat as another is not like a task you can do overnight. an afternoon. You require like specialists and painters and a ship crew and you got to do it at a shipyard. And there would be like actors here. Has anyone come forward and said that they're part of this conspiracy? Not a single person.
And as you point out, there's like a bunch of issues with this. And the issues kind of help us to understand the problems with conspiracy theories in general, because one of the questions we always have to ask is how many people would have to be in on this conspiracy? And in the case of the Titanic Olympic switcheroo, it would at least be hundreds, probably thousands.
I mean, there were over 800 crew members on the Titanic. They would have been very familiar with that ship. They would have noticed the differences if it had been switched. There were some structural differences between those two ships on the A deck and the B deck. For example, the A deck promenade on the Olympic was open and the Titanic was partially enclosed by windows.
You're going to notice that difference if they try to make that switch. Not only that, but the shipyard workers have to carry out the physical changes. There would have been hundreds of them. The Board of Trade performed an official and thorough inspection of the Titanic after it was built, and they would have needed to be in on it. The crew members of the rescue ships would need to be on it.
Also, what about this alleged mystery ship that crashed into the rebranded Olympic? If it was damaged, where's the evidence? If it sank, why did nobody ever mention a missing ship and crew? The whole thing would have cost a fortune in labor costs and bribes. And based on the timeline, they would have had to pull the whole thing off in about a week.
Yeah. And don't overestimate human competence.
Yeah, which- Could they even have pulled it off? And it's interesting you say that because that's something that often goes along with conspiracy theories is this notion that humans are extremely competent and capable of like immense levels of control. Whereas we know that out here, as we'll talk about in a bit, like things are all chaos and mayhem and people are terrible at keeping secrets.
And the shipyard that this would have had to have been done in was out in the open and easily viewed by the public. And as if that isn't enough to sort of just defuse this, the two ships had different numbers stamped on all of the parts of the ships. Titanic was 401 and Olympic was 400. And the parts that have been brought up from the wreck of the Titanic are stamped with 401.
And the parts that were taken off the Olympic after she was decommissioned were stamped with 400. So none of this adds up. The ship at the bottom of the ocean is definitely the Titanic.
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Chapter 5: What evidence supports the conspiracy theory about the Titanic?
Like, that's just like obviously the worst thing anyone in humanity can do. Like, why is that? I mean, I guess it makes sense. You're responsible for the lives of the crew, but it seems to me like, you know,
I think in part, it's just the embarrassment of showing up later and being the captain and having a bunch of other people having drowned. And then you're dry. It's a bad look.
Okay. It's a bad look is why it's so bad. Okay. But back to this conspiracy. So the captain goes down. Is no evidence at all other than rich person had something to gain, therefore rich person is responsible?
No, I mean, again, and if circumstances had been different and Strauss had canceled and Morgan had drowned, then I'm sure right now we'd have conspiracy theories formed that Strauss had killed Morgan instead. I mean, that's the thing about the conspiracy theories is that you can always just sort of shake them around to suit whatever weird coincidences happen to happen.
Let's zoom forward at least five or ten years to the ocean gate submersible that exploded underwater. Imploded is actually the word. Imploded, yes. Underwater in a wild display of incompetence. I call it Ocean Gate Gate. You're welcome. I mean, that's... You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I imagine there's conspiracy theories about this.
This one was kind of hard to watch because it was just like rich people doing rich people things, doing like, you know, science tourism, kind of like, like we all hate on Katy Perry for taking her alleged space flight.
Yeah, and of course there was conspiracy theories about that one as well.
Yeah, but it's funny when people do like the kinds of exploration that should be done in the scientific vein and they do it by just paying for it. There's something that makes us hate them a little bit more. And so it was very easy to hate on these rich people when that horrible catastrophe happened.
Yeah, I mean, it wasn't our proudest moment, but as a society, we did kind of dunk on that incident. I mean, it is interesting that over 100 years later, the Titanic is continuing to claim the lives of wealthy people because, of course, that submersible imploded in the ocean while on a dive down to the Titanic wreckage.
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Chapter 6: What are the flaws in the Titanic Olympic switch theory?
New this winter on Global. Have you ever told a lie? Are you serious? Isn't lying part of the job description of CIA? From executive producer Dick Wolf and the team behind FBI. New partner. He can be a little by the book.
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