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Titanic

iregk

Right this one hasn't come up yet. Was this a genuine first sail hits an ice berg and sinks or was it the Olympia swap and largest insurance fraud in the world at the time?

What do you think?

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miju

saw the documentary, titanic is lying at the bottom of the ocean no doubt about it

iregk

Yeah my feeling is that it was Titanic that sank and given the era that this happened in getting another ship out there for an insurance fraud is a little far fetched.

billy the squid

The only reason i can think of for the White Star Line sending out the renamed Olympic instead of the Titanic would be that the Titanic was not completed on time and had a larger insurance policy, whereas the Olympic was ready to sail.

Other than that I see no reason for renaming the two ships.

Personally I would think that the whole titanic sinking was down to overconfidence, whith a dash of disregard for safety, and a sprinkle of upper class snobbery. many more lives could have been saved were it not for the fact that the small number of lifeboats they did have were not filled to capacity because people didnt want to share with the lower classes.

maquiladora

I think the real mystery regarding Titanic is how is won 11 Oscars and made over $600m at the box office. :cool:

miju

ah thats a conspiracy theory all in itself maquiladora :0

Blondie86Star

The devil was meant to have been on it in Belfast disguised as a worker. his hoof was seen

miju

sounds like an entertaining read got any sources for that Blondie, otherwise refer to the charter

netwhizkid

I read in a book I have called "the worlds greatest mistakes" That the curse of tutankhamun had something to do with the Titanic's demise as there was some relics on it supposedly. I will get the book and post the article here.

iregk

Well in response to billy the reason for renaming olmympia had nothing to do with titanic being finished on time. What happened was on a test voyage to liverpool and back it hit another vessel in Liverpool and damaged the hull. They just about got her back to belfast where the olympia was docked. The cost of repair to Titanic was in itself titanic (pardon the pun) and would never have been completed in time for the launch.

As olympia was ready to sail they modified parts of olympia to look exactly like titanic and rebadged her. As olympia was an ageing vessel that was going to be taken out of commission any way they set about destroying her and getting a monetary winfall in teh process. She sailed as Titanic with a pre arranged rendevous for the atlantic in teh shape of a fishing vessell. When are the correct point (the fishing vessell was way of course) they set the explosives adn sank titanic. The plan was to save most of the people with the fishing vessell but as it was so far off course it didn't make it in time. Titanic was repaired, renamed and lived a long life as Olympia.

The insurance was never paid out as the insurance company blamed it on negligance. Thats the conspiracy theory anyway.

All the talk of the devil etc... my mother said to me before the code on the hull of Titanic when read backward said No God or something like that.

billy the squid

all the devil talk can go to the paranormal forum

the thing is though. Was the iceberg not witnessed once the ship hit it. the titanic, from what I can gather tried to avoid the iceberg, thus scuppering the idea that there were explosives used to sink the ship

BlitzKrieg

the version i heard (in the book Riddle of the titanic) is similar to iregk's except it was the olympic that was damaged as it returned. dislodging a propeller blade. It was decided to take the titanic's propeller to replace the olympics damaged one instead of building a new one. The propellors are swapped and the Olympic now sails with the titanic's licence number (on the propeller). Due to the rising cost of both ships (and building of third) the insurance scam is devised which was to sink the olympic pretending it was the titanic (both ships were in dry dock so switch could easily be made) Olympic sails hits iceberg as planned, except they miscaculated the rate at which she was going to sink and she went too fast.

now i dont really believe much of that. But the unsolved mystery (i think) is that the propeller blade on the wreck has the original titanic's serial number on it, which was meant to be on the olympic.

SpitfireIV

Just spotted this thread and thought I'd throw in my two cents

.

All this talk of the ship that really sank was the Olympic is very unfounded I think.

For one, the Olympic, was in a way a test dummy for Titanic, on her sea trials points were noted, such as, on A deck the promiade deck was too open, too breezy and a sea spray, therfore a lot of passengers wouldnt go out on it.

Note: Enclose the forward half of Titanics A deck, and leave the rear open, hence the very different look to both Titanic and Olympic.

Second, Olympic also had an open B deck, this again, like the first point let in too much breeze, wind and sea spray.

Note: Therefore it was enclosed, and devided into 'private promiande' rooms, Mr Ismay owning one, Thomas Andrews owned another. And in the movie 'Titanic' its one of these rooms that 'Rose' owns.

B deck was also used on Titanic for the 'A la Carte' resteraunt, which Olympic did not have! Again, Titanic had a slightly different appearence to its B deck.

The two points above, although they may seem insignifigant actually do make a striking difference to the Olympic and Titanic, and you will often see in old news and film reels the Olympic passed off as Titanic because the producers arent aware of these differences.

After returning from its sea trials the Olympic did have a collision with a Royal Naval warship, the name of which I cant recall at the moment, it cut a large gash in I think the port side by the propellor shaft and tore off the prop. It was brought back to dry dock, and Titanics propellor and propellor shaft were used to repair the Olympic. Nothing suspicious, just the management using there brains, why have new parts made that would take a long time when they were already sitting there waiting to be put on an un finished ship.

I can see nothing suspicious about Titanics sinking. For the most part it is entriely human error, such as:

1. The crew and officers werent familiar with each other.

2. The crew did not have time to become familiar with the ship.

3. A falure with the 'Board of Trade' for allowing a ship of its size to sail with so few lifeboats. Titanic was well within law, in fact it had more lifeboats than it need have carried. Back then the amount of lifeboats a ship carried wasnt calculated by how many passengers the ship could hold, but curiously by the gross tonnage of the ship. Titanic was 65,000 tons, they had never encouters such a ship, the largest the board of trade had listed was 10,000 tons, hence Titanic complied with that and only carried lifeboats for everyone 1 in 3 passengers.

4. Back to point one, the crew werent familiar with each other, hence there was confusion and this resulted in the keys to the officers safe being lost, in which were the lookouts binoculars. I doubth this would have made much of a difference, it was a flat calm, so no water to breeak at the base of the iceberg, no moon to reflect off the iceberg, and still against them the berg was a 'black' berg, it was one that had rolled over in the water thus exposing the clear side of it, not the white icebergs that we'd know.

5. Overconfidence, White Star never claimed that Titanic was unsinkable, however there was confidence in new technology and a desire to prove that Titanic was a marvel and so the officers pushed her to breaking point, thus resulting in travelling too fast through a known ice field even though they had been given repeated warnings from other ships that were stopped in the icefield.

6. When the iceberg was spotted the officer on watch, again I cant recall his name now, Murdoch I think, ordered 'hard a starboard' and 'full reverse', by putting the ship into reverse he stopped the flow of water past the rudder, thus resulting in a weak turn, if he had of kept the ship full ahead the rudder may have had more effect. It has also been said that had they rammed the iceberg things could have been different, but thats speculating.

The berg didnt cut a gash in the ship as folklore would have it, instead it popped the rivets in the area of impact. The steel used at the turn of the centuary was found to become very stressed when subjected to extreme cold, as was to be found in the Atlantic, and with the force of the collision these plates simply buckled and popped there rivets.

7. Such a great loss of life came about as ye all well know, class distinction and sheer snobbery in the face of a deadly situation. Lack of lifeboats, as already mentioned. Titanic had unique davitts, 'Wellins Double Acting Quadrant Davitts', Double acting mean they could swing out, lower a boat and be brought back in to hook up another boat, and the 'quadrant' bit meaning each davitt could hold 4 boats..........they each held 1! But again, Titanic was within the boundry of the law.

Wow, I think I wrote enough by now, but as I say, I dont believe any of this stuff I hear about curses, insurance scams or folklore. It was an age where man thought they could over come mother nature and it was this pigheadness which was to be there downfall. Just a brief look at the Titanics history will make you realise that it was all a tragic accident, one that was waiting to happen.

Take care,

CroppyBoy1798

Limerick Dude

wow great post croppy that was a very interesting read

SpitfireIV

Glad you enjoyed it Limerick Dude

CoBurN

iregk wrote:

All the talk of the devil etc... my mother said to me before the code on the hull of Titanic when read backward said No God or something like that.

I think it said no pope backwards..3909 011. (imagine with straight "9's)

Somethingh was arry, think about the best ship in the world, your first day as watcher.....you are Speedin trough a section of sea u were just informed is feckin jammers with big frickin bergs!!! WITH NO BINOCULARS, i mean wouldnt u just break the things out.

Speculating here!!! but this is the place to do that so, what if u wanted to carry out the fraud u were talkin abut, could you prevent access to the goggles, head flat-out on into Bergsville,Atlantic Ocean, with enough boats for you and all ur chums.

Just recently watched some incredible stuff on the New World Order, which got me thinkin about Titanic again. Would love if anyone knows were i could find out anything on the Titanic and the companies involved (who stands to gain). If you can start a war and get away(profitably) with it, why not sink a ship?

SpitfireIV

CoBurN,

I dont think anyone really did stand to benefit financially, of course there were insurance claims and payments made. But White Star and Captain Smith were held solely responsible for the tragedy, as well as Stanley Lord (captain of the Californian) reciving blame for not coming to Titanics aid.

If anything it cost White star money.

After lessons being hard learned with Titanic, the Olympic was recalled, put in dry dock and had to have a complete refit, i.e an inner skin fitted, so that it actually had two hulls. The tops of the 'water tight' compartments were made watertight as far as D deck. And extra lifeboats (enough for everyone on board) as well as extra davitts were fitted, so if anything it was more of a head ache to have to pull Olympic out of service and loose its star liner for months.

As for why the bino's werent broke out, I dont know, and I dont think we'll ever know. Its hard for us to judge them with hindsight. And the reason why there were so few lifeboats is stated in my above post, so no mystery there.

I never seen any possibility of Titanic being a conspiracy, the only thing that I put it down to is arrogance....nothing more.

CroppyBoy1798

Intifadah

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=saHs6J0OXVI

Mahatma coat

Intifadah http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=saHs6J0OXVI
21-01-2006 22:16

truly spectacular takin of the Pi$$

'see how the ice melts and there is almost no meltin from the metal'

:D:D:D:D

and his scale reproduction was somewhat off in orders of magnitude for the Iceberg:rolleyes:

still tho, is there anything behind these claims, did anyone profit or further advance their cause through the deaths of the people on the ship?

IIRC there were some rather important new york banking families on board.

MinMac

This is a very difficult one. I have always made my mind up about what I believe the real story is on most conspires. However the arguments for and against this on EVERYTHING I have read and watched reagarding this lead me to believe it could have been either ship. RAISE THE TITANIC!!!

OpenYourEyes

I seem to recall seeing on some tv programme about it that pretty much the entire crew quit days before the voyage, a new crew had to be assembled, and alot of the lower positions were filled by poor people from around the docks who were just happy for the work like

Never would have happened if the original crew didnt know something!

interesting if true!

whiterebel

I maybe being thick here, but i can't see why the Olympic was swapped for the Titanic for insurance? She wasn't an "ageing ship", only a couple of years older than the Titanic. The third sister the Britannic also went down 4 years after the Titanic, again very quickly. Which to me shows either really bad design, or really bad luck or a combination of both.

Ciaran500

I think the idea was that something had serioulsy damaged the olympic but it was still sailing, so they replaced the Titanic with it and sank it for the insurance money.

Minder

The iceberg was employed by the Rothschild banking family to assassinate the Astors and pave the way for financial world domination.;)

elberry

the conspiracy I have heard is different than swapping boats and the people who planned it were after alot more than insurance money.

Those who profitted most from the Titanic were the people who came to own the Federal Reserve bank of america, which was finally installed a year after the disaster. Those who were most powerfully opposed to the Federal Reserve Bank being pushed on the american people went down with the ship, namely Benjamin Guggenheim, John Jacob Astor (original owner of empire state building and one of the richest men in the world at the time) and Isador Strauss (head of Macys). The White Star Line had connections to the owners of the Federal Reserve.

Hobbes

I heard this guy might have something to do with it.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c287/emma30/vlcsnap-126672.png

apprantly his face turns up at most major disasters in our history.

Mahatma coat

/*prepares for ridicule*/

who that hobbes??

BetsyGray

Great post by croppie way back there. You're very well informed.

The whole conspiracy theory thing just doesn't hold up for me.

Diogenes

Mahatma coat wrote: »

/*prepares for ridicule*/

who that hobbes??

Christopher Ellecscake, aka The Doctor.

Mahatma coat

I thought that, dosent look much like him tho