February 24, 2023 • 58 mins
The 1912 sinking of the Titanic left an indelible mark on Western culture, so it's no surprise that more than a decade later revisionists and fringe theorists continue to claim there's something more to the tragic story. Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they take a closer look at the true story of the Titanic.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In nineteen twelve, the famous ship the Titanic infamously and
tragically sank or did it? Yeah? Probably? Yeah, I mean
yeah probably. I mean they made a movie about it,
and I think I can knew that if it didn't happen. Yeah,
thanks Cameron. It doesn't make things up out of a
(00:20):
whole cloth, right, We've all been to Avatar. What's the
name of the planet? Pandora? Who had been to Pandora?
And the fact that I confuse the name of the
film with the planet should not dissuade you from the
veracity of that statement. But but yeah, there are a
lot of conspiracies about the Titanic, and some of them
(00:41):
are rabbit holes. Absolutely, So let's get all brock love
it with this one and search for some underwater treasure.
That's a comedy bang bang reference. I hope you're listening
to that podcast too. From uf thos to psychic powers
and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You
can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't
(01:02):
want you to know. Welcome back to the show. My
name is Matt, my name is no. They call me Ben.
You are you? And that makes this stuff They don't
(01:23):
want you to know. As always, we are joined by
our superproducer Tristan McNeil. Tristan, do you want to wave
to us? Okay, well, everybody will just have to believe
us when we say that Tristan was indeed waving. Tristan
just communicates in emojis. We found out it's it's pretty intense.
Like there's three that he uses. There's the O face emoji, yeah,
(01:44):
there's the hand on jim like finger yeah, and then
there's the shocked emoji. I see that one most often. Yeah,
So he exists swinging between those three emojis. You know,
I kind of like it when it's like when they
see if you go into a really great restaurant and
you know it's great because they may only have six
(02:04):
things on the menu, but they have mastery over all
of those. I just look at the pictures. I prefer
to order off menu. Have you ever been on a cruise?
I have no, Really, it's not it's not for me.
I didn't really think it was for me either, pun
doing it. But yes, interesting experience to be out in
(02:26):
the ocean with several thousand other people just on a
big floating metal thing. Now was it was it a
Was it like a family cruise or was it a
themed cruise, because you know those things occur, I could.
I don't know exactly what it was. It was um Norwegian,
I think was the name of the company. Did you
see any icebergs? I saw zero icebergs, and I was
(02:48):
looking for a good thing. For some reason, they don't
hang out in the Caribbean. Yes, that's now, that's what
I thought too. There's a Caribbean cruise was and I'm
glad you had a good time. How old were you?
That wasn't long ago? Maybe two three years? Oh, that's
where you went. I'm a bad friend. I remember you
(03:10):
said you were at sea, and I thought you were
just joking and let it go. To be clear, it
wasn't my idea, but it was fun. We should also
mentioned before we really get cooked with gas here. I
don't know if if any of you folks have heard
of this before, but a while ago, Matt and Nolan
I found out about a conspiracy themed cruise, conspira Sea
(03:35):
conspiracy cruise, and when you briefly, we briefly kicked around
the idea of going. But I don't know, especially if
cruises aren't Nol's thing, and it just seems like an
awful lot of like being corralled and kind of you know,
heard it around, and I'm not really into shuffleboard, so
(03:58):
I feel like they'd be limited stuff for me. I'd
like to travel on cargo ship or via icebreaker into
the polls, but I don't know if I would go
on them, you know, a normal cruise, just because they're
their own economies, you know, like they're their own worlds. Yeah,
there's no escape. I'd like to ride on a cruise missile.
Maybe that'd be cool. That'd be kind of cool with
(04:18):
the cowboy hate. So but whether or not we or
you are fans of cruises, one thing is for sure.
Cruises are super popular. People love the idea, right, hop
on a boat, get away from it all. See a
couple foreign countries. Maybe the practice of cruising recreationally entirely
(04:43):
for pleasure, you know, where you don't have to bring
home like spoils of war or or salmon to smoke
or something. It dates back for a while. It began
with the formation something called the Peninsular and Oriental Steam
Navigation Company in eighteen twenty two. Now they started out
as just a shipping company. They're gonna take your stuff,
(05:05):
put it on a boat, and take it somewhere else
wherever you need it to be. But then they realize, hey,
maybe there's something else to this. They were going on
routes between England and the Iberian Peninsula, and they adopted
that name Peninsular Steam Navigation Company from that peninsular routing
that they were taking. That's a great word to peninsula. Yeah,
(05:26):
I feel like that some law enforcement officer probably uses
that in a sobriety test, like repeat the following words
to me, right, rural juror peninsula. Yes, anyway they Yeah,
Matt is absolutely correct. They began actually as a they
began traveling to this peninsula and to Egypt to deliver
(05:50):
mail as a postal route. But they began becoming, you know,
known for this great route and you could ride along
for a nominal fee. The first vessel built just for
luxury cruising came only a few decades later, the Prinzacing
Victoria Louise of Germany, designed by a guy with the
(06:10):
name get this, Albert Balling yep designing ships stacking duckets. Yeah,
and that was a nineteen hundred and so now fast
forward to twenty seventeen. As we record this, cruise ships
are popular around the globe, and every market trend just
(06:31):
indicates that they will become even more popular in the
coming years. Wouldn't the full name be pleasure cruise. It's
a pleasure cruise. Yeah, that's a really good point, a
pleasure cruise. There's a wide variety of pleasures. Taking a
pleasure cruise to pleasure island. That's nice. And it is
strange to think of how harrowing a journey, a long
(06:52):
boat trip would be and has been throughout history, Like
how many people die when you take a long ship
journey back in the day, even not long before this
time in nineteen hundred, you would have serious issues with
having enough food and water on the ship for enough
(07:12):
of the people and be comfortable there. And if sickness
was a major and like you know, sanitary conditions and
spreading disease, you know, and people you hear about people
getting you know, scurvy and whatnot, and like you know, malnutrition. Yeah,
I would think the idea of a pleasure cruise had
to be a pretty big marketing push to make that
(07:34):
fly yea. And also probably you know, for the wealthy,
the ones who got to hang out up top, while
we know that the steerage you know down below was
where the I guess the employees and some of the
less fortunate passengers got to hang out. And honestly, guys,
it hasn't changed since then. Yeah, in the sea or
(07:56):
the air, have you have you flown coach only? Rough?
Why are there always new weird gradations of Luxurian planes.
There's like economy economy plus they don't ever say coach anymore.
They don't change anything though, they just change the wording.
I mean, all these planes that you fly on, they're
like the same ones from They still have ash trays
in the right. We're not talking about planes, but I
(08:20):
think it is a good comparison. So the market predictions
estimate that by twenty twenty, almost twenty five million people
will take a cruise each year. And of course, disasters
occur in every industry, and when something goes wrong in
the world of cruise ships, people can die. One of
the most famous cruise ship tragedies. Yes, that's true, folks.
(08:41):
We are getting to a point here. It's not just
us talking about whether we're going to take a cruise.
We are exploring one of the most infamous tragedies in
modern maritime history, the sinking of the Titanic. That's a bummer.
I didn't sign up for that. I thought we were
just going to talk about cruises. Well they and sign
up to sync or did they? Like? Wait, never mind,
(09:05):
if you want to refund on your ticket for the podcast,
then we'll have to sell tickets. There's some cool stuff here,
you guys, the stuff that I was unaware of, and
that certainly was not addressed in James Cameron's blockbuster smash
Titanic A Love Story, which allegedly have you heard the
rumor about titan they got dosed with LSD or something
(09:27):
like that. Oh. I well, with the making of the film,
I heard that James Cameron really just wanted to explore
the wreckage in a submarine. He made that movie too,
and he did the Mariannas Trench and his little tiny subect.
But no, I heard that he was such a monster
that like somebody dosed was trying to dose him with
LSD and ended up like dosing all of the food
(09:50):
on the spread or something like that for the cool
crew and cast with LSD and they ended up causing
some issues. That would that work? Woul that work someone
with don't worry, we won't put you on blast, but
someone with the experience in that in that field, let
us know if experience in dosing multiple people, Well, if
(10:10):
LSD would work in food. I had never heard that.
That's fascinating. Oh heait, guys, I found it. So Apparently
it was some much LSD laced chowder that was intended
for mister Cameron, but others ended up eating it, and
the assistant This is on an Ion nine article, by
the way, excellent side. The assistant director apparently got so
freaked out that he stabbed James Cameron in the face
(10:33):
with a pencil. Oh my gosh. Well, also, you shouldn't
eat other people's chowder. There are multiple lessons to learn
here and and the history of the well, I don't
know if the history of the real Titanic is as
interesting in bizarre as that historical note on the film,
but we do have the history of the actual Titanic too,
(10:55):
which is relatively LSD free. Yes, it dates back to
nineteen oh evan when a guy named James Bruce Ismay,
who was the son of this other guy named Thomas.
He founded the White Star line of ocean liners on
the idea that people would travel farther by ship if
the vessels were just luxurious enough for them to want
(11:16):
to stay on that ship, like a pleasure cruise. Yeah,
the idea of I don't want to be on a
ship for two days, but if I can go bowling
on that ship, maybe I will. If there's a tub,
if it's opulent, if there are servants, if I can drink,
and as much as I want whenever I want. Sure,
For some reason, I feel like people in the early
(11:38):
twentieth century did that anyway. Yeah, I just feel like
getting drunk on a cruise ship would be a recipe
for disaster because it's like, what if he even have
mild c sickness, wouldn't that be just exacerbated by you know,
alcohol consumption. I don't know, that's a I wonder if
you I imagine that many people become acclimated to it
(12:00):
if they're on for a week. Get your sea legs,
get your sea legs, yes, exactly. And mostly people are
on the slots or in the casino, just so you know,
on a cruise ship. So part of the reason that
Ismay was inspired to do this. He had a partner,
Lord Piri, who was chairman of Harland and Wolf shipbuilders,
(12:21):
and Puri kept talking about the Mauritania and the Lusitania,
which were the newest vessels of something called the Cunard line.
Ismay and Piri were convinced that they could create bigger
and better and more luxurious ships. So then they imagined
three giants, the Gigantic, which would isn't that an awesome name?
(12:46):
It later would change his name to the Britannant, right,
much more luxurious sounding, the Olympic and the Ti Tanic
the Titanic, and these ships would but they're gonna be
so posh, you guys, you have no idea how poshu
they're gonna be. They're gonna be fast, they're gonna be
so safe. We're gonna get you there in style. And
(13:06):
they're huge. I mean, yeah, Gigantic was an appropriate name.
It just doesn't have the same ring as Britannic. Yeah,
but then you you think Titanic is after titan which
is another just giant thing, saying Titan or Giant. I
wonder if they had another name for Olympic. And we're
just too embarrassed to put it in the history books.
(13:27):
Was it just big, bigly, big boy, big boy, big atron.
So the Titanic itself was, you know, not ironically named.
It was almost nine hundred feet long, and it was
almost ninety three feet wide. It weighed almost forty five
(13:50):
thousand tons. It had two reciprocating engines, each of which
were about four stories tall. That's incomprehensible for me. There
were there were three propellers. Two of them were like
a little over twenty three feet in diameter, and then
there was one. There was a four blade propeller that
was seventeen feet near the ship's seventeen feet in diameter
(14:14):
near the ship's rudder, and it could make it could
generate enough horsepower to get it to the insane speed
of twenty seven point six miles per hour, which I
know does not sound impressive, but again, this thing is
like nine hundred feet long to be that huge, yeah,
and then stopping it is an issue, right, And the
ship was so massively Titanic that it actually could not
(14:38):
be constructed on existing docks and launching sites, so they
actually had to build a whole new set of docks
called the White Star docks and the Great Gantry, which
was a series of fifteen massive cranes that allowed them
to accommodate all of the moving parts of the shipbuilding process.
(15:00):
So the Titanic was finished in nineteen twelve, and it
took an estimated eleven thousand people to build it. I
can't even picture what that would like. How do you
even like manage eleven thousand people? Is that like an
Egyptian period? I was thinking the same thing. It's insane
and all in all, the cost was an estimated seven
(15:22):
point five million dollars, which today would amount with inflation
to about one hundred and eighty nine million, one hundred
eighty six thousand, seven hundred and seven dollars and ninety cents.
And that's in twenty seventeen dollars. And here's the big thing.
They called it unsinkable. Spoiler really got to follow through
(15:44):
with that kind of promise. You know, they were all
they were so, so very wrong. And here lies the
kernel of today's episode. K E R in Yale kernel.
Let's do it. Commercial break and we are back, as
(16:09):
you know, well as we make very few assumptions on
this show, but for this we're just going to assume
that everyone knows that the Titanic is indeed sinkable and sank.
What you may not know is the true story of
how this disaster occurs. We're gonna set the scene for
you and walk through this pretty quickly, hopefully, and we're
(16:32):
relying a lot on some excellent work by our colleagues
at how Stuff Works website on their article how the
Titanic Worked, which you can read for more information. Things
are eventually going to get crazy, right, yes, cool? The
ship sets sail from its launching site in Belfast to Southampton,
England in April of nineteen twelve. Titanic picked up its
(16:53):
passengers from England, it moved along to France and then
to Queenstown, Ireland to get the rest. Collectively, there were
about two thousand, two hundred and eight passengers and eight
hundred ninety nine officers and crew. So, going back to
the class system we mentioned earlier, there were three hundred
and twenty nine first class travelers, several of whom were
(17:15):
titans of industry, the giants of industry, so I don't
say tighten all the time, two hundred and eighty five
second class travelers and seven hundred and ten third class travelers.
So let's break down some of these classes really fast.
Let's look at the cream of the crop of that
first class. We're talking primarily wealthy industrialists and the people
(17:36):
that they call their families hopefully actually their families, their entourages,
perhaps sure, their personal servants. And among these people were
well too well known John Jacob Astor, the fourth of
the Astor family that you may have heard of before
on this show, one of these wealthy families that made
their money on what ben opium? Opium, not all of it,
(17:59):
but a lot of it exactly. And then JP Morgan
another name that you have heard before, undoubtedly, And mister
Morgan was forced to cancel his passage due to insert
reason here. There are so many different reasons that have
been given for him having to cancel. He says one thing,
(18:19):
other people see him doing other things. Will explore it
a little later. Among the second class passengers were businessmen,
members of the clergy. There were also teachers and a
chauffeur who were traveling second class and then third class
or steerage. The part where who was that actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
(18:42):
That's where he would have been. Yep, the in the
Titanic film. First class tickets were pretty expensive, round twenty
five to forty five hundred dollars. That's between forty four
thousand and a little over eighty thousand today. Whoa an
eighty thousand dollars ticket? Now, granted that's top of the line. Yeah,
(19:06):
I'm sure you essentially have an apartment on the sea
at that point. Yeah, but then you look at the
third class ticket and it's going to be obtained for
around thirty five dollars at the time, or six hundred dollars. Now, wow,
it's selling. We're qvcing this for which one? For the
third class? The steerage six hundred, six hundred bucks today's dollars.
(19:27):
But no, I know, but I was saying, like, you know,
even for today's dollars, if I'm paying six hundred, I
would expect more than steerage. Yeah, but six hundred dollars
to how many day crews? You know, you're talking multiple
days a ship. It's not like all that stuff. But
let me also point out that for that ticket, I
don't know if we have this cer notes, but it
(19:49):
is true that the conditions did radically differ. There were
two bathtubs for everybody in third class, like two bathtubs
for seven hundred people. But that's also where all the
sweet Irish dancing took place. Yes, if we are, if
we are, to believe the excellent documentary by James Cameron. Right, yeah,
and all right, so fast forward. It's April fourteenth, nineteen twelve,
(20:13):
third day of the voyage. The water is around twenty
eight degrees fahrenheit. That's very cold. It's dangerously cold if
you're out in the open ocean. Around noon of that day,
the Titanic's Marconi wireless operators, they had a Marconi radio,
very cutting edge at this time, but also very new technology,
(20:34):
they received the first of what would be a total
of four cautionary messages about large ice floes ahead. They
got a second message of five to thirty five from
a ship that reported three icebergs just nineteen miles north
of Titanic's path and just one hour before the collision.
(20:54):
Vessel named the Californian message the Titanic, we are stopped
and surrounded by ice. And apparently the person who was
manning the Marconi Whi's what they called it at that time,
person who was manning the Marconi on the Titanic replied,
shut up, I am busy. I am working Cape race
the captain and Captain Smith wasn't worried about icebergs. After all,
(21:17):
he was piloting a mass or captaining rather a massive
steel behemoth. Instead, the story goes, he was concerned about
shattering speed records set by other massive maritime behemoths. H
I can imagine that, taking your mind off of what's
around you and just focusing on the instrumentation going on.
And he tried to be you know, he tried to
(21:39):
be responsible at is his job. So he told an
officer named Lyteler, who was stationed on the captain's bridge,
that if the night became too hazy, he should be
alerted immediately and they would slow the ship's speed. But
the night was clear, and so the Titanic sped on.
There were two officers, won by the name of Frederick Fleet,
(22:00):
the other Reginald Lee, who were in the observation port.
Fleet was getting to the end of his shift when
he saw the iceberg and said I So they sounded
the alarm, and they called down to the bridge, and
a full thirty seven seconds passed before the first officer,
William M. Murdoch shut off the engines, dropped the watertight
(22:22):
doors to the bottom compartments, because the ship was made
up of these different compartments that were able to flood
and keep the water from spreading elsewhere. And that's a
big issue that led to the ultimate sinking of the ship,
was that these things did not work as expected. So
he killed the engines, shut the doors, and turned the
(22:42):
ship away from its front end so that the iceberg too.
They took the hit on the side of the ship
right right. They did not have enough time to make
a complete stop or even to turn away. Stopping the
ship would have required a half mile in this iceberg
was nine hundred feet from the ship. That's that oh
no moment if you're in your car and you're in
(23:05):
traffic or something and you realize you have to stop,
but oh, I'm too close to fully apply the brakes here.
I'm gonna have to go to the side of this
vehicle or something. Yeah, And I mean what ended up
happening was the iceberg just kind of shredded the side
of the ship. It's dragged along the edge of it, right,
creating a huge scar that just hemorrhaged, you know, and
(23:26):
for a few minutes, it looked like their last second
maneuver may have worked. From the surface, the ship appeared
to have missed the iceberg, but underneath, whereas we know,
icebergs are much larger. Right, protruding fragment of ice ripped
a hole through the Titanic's hull, just like a null said,
if the ship was shuddering or showing initial irregularities in movement,
(23:51):
it was subtle and went undetected or excused as the
heavy groaning machinery. When Captain Smith surveyed the flood damage,
he and a film named Thomas Andrews said the hole
must be nearly three hundred feet wide, but in reality
it was a tear smaller. It was smaller. It was
like six lacerations about three and a half square feet.
(24:12):
But not only did the captain's navigation attempt not work,
it made things worse. It moved the Titanic from the
sturdiest place to withstand the impact to the most vulnerable point,
and even the smallest gash caused these terrible results. So
earlier we mentioned how the compartments could close right these
watertight things to prevent the spread of floodwater. Five of
(24:34):
the ship's compartments had already begun to flood, and Captain
Smith said the ship was going to sink. Unquestionably, we
have He predicted about an hour or an hour and
a half left before it would slip to the bottom
of the Atlantic. And here's the thing. The Titanic didn't
just sink. There are reports from my witnesses that testified
(24:56):
that it actually broke completely in half. The science actually
supports these accounts. You see the middle of the ship
that you've got all the stress of the water filled
compartments that we're talking about, right, that's a ton of weight.
And as one of the like ends began to keel
out of the water like come up and rise, you've
(25:17):
got all that weight in the center and it just
broke the thing in half. There's so much pressure there.
The stress reached around thirty five hundred pounds per square
inch on the boat deck itself, and that's fifty percent
more stress than this whole ship was meant to take.
There were plenty of life jackets to go around, that's
the good news. They were built of cork, which is weird,
(25:37):
but not so weird back then, one would hope. However,
there was of the two thousand, two hundred and eight
passengers and the almost nine hundred crew members, it was
room for only eleven hundred and seventy six for them
in the lifeboats. At twelve twenty five am, so April fifteenth, now,
(25:57):
the captain gave the crew orders to start. We're in
the lifeboats, leading the first class passengers to the boat deck. Uh.
And they were when Billy Zane kicked that little girl
off the lifeboat. I remember, was that Billy's Billy Zane? Yeah? No,
not not the disparage, but I mean Billy Zane, the
actor playing a a jerky first class passenger who was
(26:20):
Rose's original love interest, but as it turned out, the
scrappy young lad Leonardo Dicafrio won her heart at least
at least well, no, I think she was in love
with them and died she was in love with Is
okay to spoilt Titana? I think? So? My god, that's
sort of like spoiling the assassination of a Ramwick, right, right?
(26:42):
So there were fourteen lifeboats that could carry sixty five people,
to emergency sea boats that could carry thirty five people,
and four collapsible boats that could carry forty nine people.
By two am, all these boats have been lowered, half
of the ship's passenger and crew still remained. And that
part from the film is a true worry. The band
did play on as the ship sank. Those folks have
(27:06):
some real they have real spine, they have a lot
of sand. Yeah. I'm trying to think of a family
friendly way to say, yeah, that's what it's gonna go.
At first, actually, they played the song of choice. They
played if this is ever in a very bizarre macabre
trivia game for you. The song of choice was Nearer
(27:28):
my God to Thee, which is a old hymn. When
a ship called the Carpathia arrived to rescue survivors, they
found a floating disaster. You know. Lifeboats are adrift, passengers
are shivering to death, surely deeply traumatized. The ship got
fourteen boats and seven hundred and twelve survivors, which means
(27:48):
more than fifteen hundred passengers and crew were dead. And
I'm sure maybe not that specifically, but you know, regulations
now would require you not to book more people than
you have safety equipment for, right, I mean, yeah, that's
that pretty big oversight, you know. Ye, people buy tickets
with that, you know, six hundred dollars inflated ticket value
(28:10):
price for that low level. Also, that's where the flooding
happened too, was down in steerage, and they were, you know,
having to deal with that, and then they get up
top escape only to realize that they are doomed. Yeah. Yeah.
Apparently the third class passengers were not allowed up until
the first and class at first and second class passengers
have been accounted for, which is just disgusting. Every time,
(28:34):
every time I think I've got a handle on humanity's
dark potential, man, something like this happens. This show is
changing me. Yeah. Yeah, Well, there's something to be said
about cruising in a place where if you do fall
into the water, it's over pretty quickly like that. I
don't know that a bad idea. Yeah, just seems like
(28:58):
a really bad idea unless you've got like contingency upon contingency,
you know. But then also, you know, this is the
top of the line. It's best in class ship, right
right right, but apparently not unbreakable or UNA. So that's
the official story. It's a tremendous loss of life, financial catastrophe,
(29:24):
a cultural catastrophe. The Titanic will spend almost a century
rotting at the bottom of the ocean, creating, you know,
a new shipwreck ecosystem. Right, and that is the official story.
But what if there were something more to the story.
Here's where it gets crazy. So, as with any large
scale disaster in the modern age, we all know this,
(29:46):
alternative theories about the Titanic begin to circulate in the
years following the event. So we got together and looked
at some of the most prevalent, uh, some of the
most plausible, which there are a few that might surprise you,
and of course the strangest. So what do we have?
Not so fast, you guys. First we have to hear
(30:09):
a word from our sponsor. You rogue. The first theory
surrounding the sinking of the Titanic is one you may
have heard, and it has to do with the global
banking elites that sank their ship to kill off their opponents.
(30:32):
And people who think that this is true believe that
this was essentially an assassination of sorts a scatter shot,
a wide shot assassination attempt on several highly important people
in the banking world. I feel like there was a
like a British crime show I saw where there was
a storyline involving a mass murderer that was actually trying
(30:56):
to assassinate a very specific group of people. Just killed
a bunch of people to cover the tracks of the
motive that make it look like an accident. Well, we
know that people have bizarre plane crashes often. Um, so this,
this then would be an act of terrorism. Who were
they actually after? You know what? They weren't killing the
(31:19):
purposely killing the entire boat. They wanted a few people, right,
like like Nolan is mentioning, well, well you got the aster,
the gentleman Aster, John Jacob Isidor Strauss, and Benjamin Guggenheim
another familiar name you know, rings a little something there
of the Guggenheim like museum and no that's m Yes,
(31:41):
all were millionaires, and they were all opposed to this
idea of creating a central bank, a private central bank,
within the United States because it's gonna negatively affect their
personal fortunes and you know, the fingers that they've got
in the pies of the banking world inside the US.
We hate that analogy. I know it's crazy, but it's high.
Like have you ever seen somebody actually have their finger
(32:03):
in a pie saw a movie back in the early
two thousand. It's American pine. It wasn't a finger, right, Yes,
you're right, Okay, the pictures, pictures, the humanity and the pie.
But but yeah, I see, I see what you're saying.
So these three men, in particular, according to this theory,
(32:26):
were against the formation of the Federal Reserve. Oh, yes,
the creature from Jekyl Island. Yes, so named because the
plans for the Federal Reserve were controversially created in a
fancy pants island off the coast of Georgia, the state,
not the country, in nineteen thirteen. So it is a
(32:50):
controversial thing, privatizing, you know, the central bank for an
entire country. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The word we use
now is quasi government. Quasi government. Okay. So according to
this h JP Morgan and Rockefeller in the various franchises
excuse me, families of the Rothschild thing. We're conspiring to
(33:14):
remove what could be substantive opposition. Here's the thing. It's
true that JP Morgan had a personal suite aboard the
ship with his own private deck. If he could believe that,
and he had a customized you know, living area in there.
(33:35):
He was booked on the ship's maiden voyage, but instead
he canceled the trip. And you may you heard us
earlier allude to what the various reasons why what did
what did you guys hear? Oh man, I heard all
kinds of stuff. I mean I heard he said he
wasn't feeling so well, so he was gonna stay home
and convalesce. But he may have just stayed in France.
(33:58):
Remember how we were saying how the Titanic left went
over to France, then went to Ireland. Well, it seems
that he stayed in the French resort to enjoy, you know,
some morning massages, some sulfur baths, that the kind of
things you do when you're a Morgan. Sulfur bath. Sulfur bath,
it's like a bathroom with sulfur instead of water. Yeah, No,
(34:19):
I am so, I am lying. I am I'm not.
Are you lying because you don't know? No, I imagine
I don't know for sure, but I imagine for exfoliation
or something feeling if it's supposed to be restorative. I mean,
this is a time when people really believed in curative springs,
so it was probably a natural, naturally occurane water source
(34:41):
that had sulfurous content in the water. Smells of enemas
going on around this yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, John Harvey
Kellogg and it smells great in a sulfur bathroom and
yogurt all over your parts. Not to mention the guy
who invented graham crackers, that's a whole another, that's a
whole another. I don't know his story. We'll leave that
for another day. Zip block full of gummy bears. The
(35:04):
whole point is that Morgan's abrupt cancelation, the decision to
not be on the ship, seems suspicious at all. Yeah,
and we will also just a side note, this is
so interesting, we will also do another episode in the
future if you would like on the bizarre, strange origins
of commonplace snacks and silverware and other seemingly innocuous products.
(35:27):
You are absolutely right, Matt. This last minute cancelation, whatever
reason he did, apparently the story is and there was
last minute, if fueled speculation that he had advanced knowledge
of the fate of the Titanic, And there are there
are a few variations in this theory. In some versions,
the three men on the boat were opposed to income
(35:50):
tax legislation. Chronologically, that one doesn't really work out. According
to other people, the Jesuit, for some reason, lured these
men on their ship. We should point out that there
is also not there's not a lot of hard evidence
on this flin in particular, and while we do know
(36:14):
that maybe plane crashes can occur, we know that there
have been questionable deaths or air quote accidents before. This
seems like it's asking a lot like who would who
would bring down a ship that's worth one hundred and
(36:36):
ninety million dollars to kill three people. That's exactly my
thought of spending that much money to make the ship
and only to have it, you know, destroyed, unless you're
getting insurance. There's also like there's better ways to assassinate
people easier, not that they don't rely on hitting an iceberg. Right, Yeah,
(36:57):
it seems like a lot of happenstance going on air.
It's like a Rube Goldberg, really is I mean, it
would be brilliant, It would be brilliant, But I fear
this is a stretch. Some of the other ones, though,
are a little less stretchy. Well, here's here's the other thing, Like,
did what if the Titanic never sank at all, that's
a real one that I will. It's a real one, man.
(37:20):
It's on here. We're looking at the outline with which
I was not familiar. So we said earlier that there
were three boats in this giant class, right, Uh, the Gigantica,
the Massifania, the Big Boy, Big Boy, and uh huh
and little Nuggets whatever their names are. Their official names
(37:42):
when they launched were the Olympic, the Britannic, and the Titanic. Uh.
What if some people argued the Titanic, rather than sinking,
was the victim or beneficiary of identity theft. What if
it was switched at the last minute for its sister ship,
the Olympia. I just don't understand why you would do that.
(38:05):
The Titanic is the big reason, Like this is the
thing you're showing off right. According to the most famous
proponent of this theory, a writer named Robin Gardener, there's
much more to the story. Gardener wrote a book called Titanic,
The Ship that Never Sank? Can you hear the question
mark we put in there? There we go perfect? So
(38:26):
this author looks at several other events and coincidences that
occurred in the months, days, hours leading up to the disaster,
and concludes the ship that sank was actually the Olympic
disguised as the Titanic, and it was an insurance scam
by the owners of the owners of the concern, which
(38:46):
was the International Mercantile Marine Group who bought White Star
Line in nineteen o two, and the controller of the
Marine Group was JP Morgan Old JP Old ap Heavy
j himself. Okay, all right, all right, So the Olympic,
check this out, was the slightly older sister of the
(39:06):
Titanic and was launched in October of nineteen ten, so
a couple of years earlier. The exterior profile was nearly
identical to the Titanic, saved for a few minor details
when we're talking about stuff like the number of portholes
on one area of the ship. So here's one example
of Gardner's argument. Gardner says the Buss ships were built
(39:27):
with linoleum floors, but shortly before she was due to
set sail, Jay Bruce Ismay, the director of White Star Line,
inexplicably ordered the floors aboard Titanic be carpeted over. There's
something else. The motivation in This theory is that the
Olympic had already been involved in a couple of accidents,
(39:49):
and that this would essentially be an insurance scam. So
you'd collect the insurance of the Titanic for sinking the Olympic, Right,
but you would still be, you know, killing hundreds of people. Yeah,
you would essentially be killing hundreds of people for a
little less than our day, our modern equivalent of two
(40:10):
hundred million dollars. I mean, what do you think the
value of a human life was in nineteen twelve? Just
thinking the same thing. We should calculate that and bring
it back in another episode. I think that's frightening. What
is our value? Yeah? Oh boy, that's a good one.
I like that as a title. Yeah, what is the
value of human life? But no, I mean I don't know.
(40:32):
I said things were getting a little less stretchy because
I don't know captains of industry or monsters a lot
of the time. And I don't think I would put
it past a JP Morgan type to value an investment
over the lives of hundreds of people. Oh absolutely, yeah,
I can. I mean, in principle I can absolutely agree,
(40:54):
because I mean, yeah, it would be harder to do
if it wasn't like actually an active event when it
took I'm saying, like, you can't just blow up the
ship at drydock. People ask questions about that, but like,
you know, but then again, how do you force it
to hit an iceberg? Like did they mess with the route?
(41:15):
Like what how would you accomplish this? Right? I think
that's a perfect setup, nol, because we're going to go
into theories about accidental occurrences, but I think within those
we're also going to find something that could lend a
little credence to or answer perhaps the question of how
someone would intentionally do this. And just to jump in
(41:37):
here talking about insurance, for you know, we're discussing how
people are definitely going to collect insurance on this. This
was a huge investment, right, No matter what happens to
the Titanic, if something bad happens, the people that own
it are for sure going to try and collect as
much as they possibly can on it, right, even like
it doesn't matter they in their mind. I can't say
(42:01):
what they're thinking, but it doesn't matter how many people
got hurt or died for the collecting of their insurance. Right,
I see what you're saying yeah, and it is tough
to ascribe motive without you know, hard documentation. Well, let's
go into even less stretchy I like that turn less
stretchy theories, the idea of possible accidental occurrences one and
(42:24):
this is so terrible possible wrong turn. Louise Patten, who's
the granddaughter of the ship's most senior surviving officer, the
man we mentioned, Charles A. Lighthowler, claims that he told
his wife a crew member turned the ship quote the
wrong way and into the course of the iceberg after
officer William Murdock first spotted it and gave a hard
(42:45):
starboard order. The cruise Liner was operating under two communication
systems that were in direct conflict with one another, and
in twenty ten Louise Patton told The Guardian UK paper
that a command to turn hard as starboard miant turn
the wheel right under one system and left under the other.
(43:06):
Because I would imagine they would have maps of known
iceberg areas right or like, you know, if there was
a cluster, they probably would have been charted. I would
think it would be a little difficult because they could
be mobile. That's true, but so but so the communication
systems we're talking about here, there are largely visual and verbal. Well, yeah,
(43:27):
there were on these were on the ship too, But
we have to keep in mind they got numerous warnings.
There were at least four different warnings throughout the day
leading up to the accident after midnight. So interesting, Yeah,
so they kept on. Maybe the captain was a bit
(43:48):
arrogant speaking. I just said, it's tough to ascribe motive,
and now I'm like, listen to this guy. Well, there
are other things too, right, There were questions about whether
or not the actual materials that were used to build
the ship were possibly not up to snuff, or even
a shortage of viewing binoculars, a shortage of an ability
(44:09):
to view icebergs that had the potential to be a problem,
which is tough, you know when you think about it.
If that is true, if there were weak ship building materials,
if there was a shortage of binoculars and a shortage
of lifeboats, this is starting to sound more and more
like some corners were being cut outside of the public eye.
Here is the most plausible, and this might answer that
(44:32):
earlier question about how someone could purposefully plan to pull
an insurance scam. If that's what if that actually happened.
Is the most plausible, or at least the least implausible
that a coal fire either significantly contributed to or is
directly responsible for the disaster. There's this journalist named sen
(44:57):
On Maloney. I'm going to call you miss maloneium because
I'm not sure if I'm pronounce your name correctly. Maloney
is a documentary called Titanic The New Evidence, and in
it he argues that a fire been smoldering and bunker
number six, one of the ship's coal bunker boiler rooms
of the Titanic since the ship left Belfast, so it
(45:20):
was burning the whole time. And it sounds crazy, but
it's true that coal coal has the ability to combust
like this. Near that bunker is where the iceberg tore
the biggest hole in the ship on its maiden voyage.
According to The Independent, Maloney claims photos of the Titanic
(45:40):
showed dark marks on the side of the ship not
facing the dock, hinting at existing fire and then should
never been put to sea. And we have a quote
from Maloney for you. The official Titanic Inquiry branded the
sinking as an act of God. This isn't a simple
story of colliding with an iceberg and sinking. It's a
(46:01):
perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together, fire, ice, and
criminal negligence. It was very game of throne. Still that
it really stoked to watch the finale tonight. So yeah,
I wasn't even expecting the fire an ice bit, he
goes on. I don't know why he talks like this,
but he just he does. I guess. We have experts
(46:22):
telling us that when you get that level of temperature
against steel, it makes it brittle and reduces its strength
by up to seventy five. The fire was known about
and briefly addressed at the inquiry, but it was played down.
It is absolutely true that there was a fire on
the ship. What we count as the newer revelatory or
(46:44):
theoretical part of this is blaming the fire for the
sinking of the ship once it hit the iceberg. Did
the fire create weakness in the metal in the material?
According to an engineer for the Geological Society Even America
and Ohio State University fellow named Robert Eisenhei, attempts to
control the coal fire and the bunker could have been
(47:07):
the reason the Titanic sailed so quickly through an area
littered with icebergs, So that would you know in the
film they're trying to set a speed record, right, and
like some kind of oceanic icarus, they go too far,
too high. My analogy is not working. So the reasoning
(47:28):
here would be that they're going that quickly because they're
having an emergency. Essentially, there's a huge issue with this fire.
We have to get to a dock somewhere and take
care of this white possibly and to connect the dots,
maybe JP Morgan one could argue knew about the fire
and didn't go and to connect the dots further, if
(47:49):
we're playing a little bit of a breadcrumb rabbit hole game,
maybe the fire was intentional. To be fair, there is
absolutely no hard proof of this at all. This is
this is speculative, at least the JP Morgan's reaction to
the fire. Right. There are a lot of myths about
(48:11):
this sort of stuff that are becoming folklore. At this point. However,
we do know that there really was a fire, and
we know that this is not the end of the
alternative theories because now we are wading into the very
very strange stuff with even allegations of the paranormal. Yeah,
(48:32):
did some man tell the future or somehow prescribe the
events that would occur to the Titanic In a novel
written in eighteen ninety eight known as Futility or Wreck
of the titan It was a guy named Morgan Robertson,
and fourteen years before the Titanic menace demise, he wrote
(48:54):
a novel that had a lot of similarities to what
happened to the Titanic, and it had to do with
insurance fraud. Mmmmmmm. And they think that this guy predicted
It was revised by the author in nineteen twelve after
the Titanic sank, to make the ship a little bigger,
(49:14):
a little different. Yeah, just like make it a little
more similar to the events of the Titanic, probably to
sell copies. And so still there are multiple purported similarities
between the events depicted in the story and the true
story of Titanic, which, of course war some of us
will call to mind the famous narrative of Arthur Gordon
(49:36):
Pim of Nantucket, written by Edgar Allan Poe, a bizarre
coincidence in a very dark one where Poe writes a
story about some people lost at sea and survival cannibalism,
and then later something very much like that happens. And
don't you spoil that post story for me. I think
(49:59):
Poe did a good job of spoiling it himself. What
are you saying. I mean, it's just not my favorite
of his story. He's following him a hack. No, no,
just so you know, in Robertson's tale Futility, Yeah, one
of the main characters or one of the characters gets
off onto the iceberg with I believe a child and
(50:19):
then is forced to do some battle with a polar
bear that is also making residence on the iceberg. That's
kind of fun and terrifying. Yeah, but you know, it's
a story that I would want to read if I
was in eighteen hundreds. Speaking of Game of Thrones, is
polar bears, zombie polar bears. It's gonna leave that right there.
(50:41):
I have no idea what you're talking about. Not really
a spoiler. It's just zombie polar bears. Okay, I've just
I've been pretending to know a Game of Thrones is
for the past several years. So Nat, please don't give
me your disappointed dad side. I for one feel betrayed.
(51:03):
Matt Matt's the kind of guy who would not be
mad at you, but just disappointed, which is somehow so
much worse. Blame parents right well, speaking in fantastic segues,
there are a couple others that are They're pretty strange.
This isn't so much a conspiracy theory as a paranormal stuff.
There was another writer in eighteen eighty six, a British
(51:25):
writer named William T. Stead who had a short story
called How the Atlantic Mail Steamer Went Down. A mail
steamer in the Atlantic collides with another vessel, shortage of
lifeboats on board caused an enormous loss of life. More
than a decade later, Stead was a passenger on the
Titanic and he was one of the fifth around fifteen
(51:47):
hundred who did not make it. Whoa and then the
very last one which we saved. Because it's just so,
it's so strange, and it feels more like creepy pasta
or a campfire story. One of the mystical versions of
the crash is associated with the legendary folkloreic Curse of
(52:07):
the Pharaohs. An ill fated ship was carrying the mummy
of an ancient Egyptian priestess that belonged to Lord Centerville,
shipping it to New York via the Titanic, remember the
whole shipping days of these boats still happening. To avoid
the damage, the box with the exhibit was placed on
the captain's bridge allegedly allegedly allegedly, and at the head
(52:33):
of the mummy there was a statue of Osiris according
to the story. Osiris, of course, as we remember, as
the Egyptian god of death. The words inscribed on this
were allegedly allegedly allegedly rise from the ashes and let
your eyes strike those who stand in your way. So
is it talking about the iceberg or the boat? Well,
(52:56):
you know, we could do an entire episode. I would
be surprised if our friends at suff you missed in
history classes stuff you should know, haven't already done an
episode on the alleged curse of the Pharaohs. We've done one,
haven't we. I know, we did a video. We did
a video, but we haven't done write it down. Guys,
here we go, do do Yeah, So we have some
(53:19):
great ideas for upcoming stuff. There we have. We have
the bizarre origins of otherwise innocuous things. Kello Cereal Graham
crackers shout out to our friends at food Stuff who
delve into some excellent history and culture of food if
you want to check that out. And then we also
have the the Pharaoh's curse, so we hope that you have.
(53:46):
We hope that you have enjoyed exploring these alternative theories.
At this point, most people are the vast majority of
humanity believe the official narrative, with the strongest other contender
being the idea that there was a fire contributing to
(54:08):
the disaster. The other stuff is interesting and it leads
us to a bunch of different possible threads, right, but
in the end way, what do you what do you
guys think? For me, it remains a tragedy that happened
because of a lot of a domino effect of things
(54:29):
that were occurring. And maybe it's just I'm too deep
in the official story, but I still see it as
that way. Nothing has convinced me thus far about this stuff,
although the fire thing that's the closest I would say, well,
the official story also as corroborating firsthand witnesses in terms
(54:51):
of survivors, people who were actually there. I think it
would be amazing if somebody could replace an entire ship
and disguise it. It's but it's so amazing and astonishing
because it borders on insanity in terms of planning, and
it seems very difficult. What do you think? No, I
(55:13):
think it was those fat cats standards of industry, just
like wanting to kill everybody for insurance money, and they
knew they were gonna get a life boat. You know,
they just colluded to I don't know, man, I it's
I guess it just depends on who who holds the policy,
like who specifically holds the policy to benefit from thinking.
(55:34):
But still, even at that level, it feels you guys,
remember that board game mouse Trap that barely ever worked. Yeah,
it feels like a level of unnecessary complexity comparable to
mouse Trap. Even in those days, I mean you had
some semblance of like, you know, sniper kind of equivalent
of it, or poisoning or someone gets someone with a
(55:58):
terminal disease to perform a hit so that their family
can benefit. Oh yeah, no, that wouldn't get you the
insurance money. But you know, what was the problem? What
was the issue? What? You know? It seems like an
awful you could get if you wanted to make a
quick buck on an insurance scam. You think you do
it with like life insurance for a human or like
(56:18):
you know, like like building a gazillion dollar luxury liner
and then arranging it to sink with people on it
so to collect the insurance money. It just doesn't seem
to add up to Maybe they've got into deep. They
build three of them, right, and that is true. That
is true, and that would be an equivalent of just
(56:40):
under six hundred million dollars. But still, oh yes, that's
our other episode. We're going to find out how much
each of us is worth justin I think justin raw
materials is probably the best way, you know, like our
people ever gonna boil us down for copper. We did
the illegal organ trading stuff, maybe we could we could
(57:02):
figure out, like what would each of our organs be
worth on the black market, and then what would be
the lifetime value of us, like in like you know,
slave labor. I don't know, jeez. Yeah, yeah, that's a
that's a great episode to do. Check out the Red
Market if you have not, if you haven't listened to
it yet, but do make sure you're not listening to
(57:23):
it while you're eating it. Is there is some very
disturbing content in there, and most importantly, we would like
to know what you think about these stories. One of
the more interesting things to us, I believe in these
sorts of situations is that so much time has passed,
you know that there's a pretty clearly cemented concept or
(57:49):
narrative that every upon which everybody agrees. But as we know,
those sorts of things can be overturned often throughout human civilization.
In a it's it's terrifying how often that can happen.
We have to remember, this is a species that totally
thought Troy was a made up city for centuries and
then some guy found it and it's real. So we'd
(58:11):
like to hear your take, not just on this, what
on other maritime disasters of human history, or your opinion
on cruises. And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
(58:31):
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
stdwy TK. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email. We are
Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want You
to Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(58:52):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
In nineteen twelve, the famous ship the Titanic infamously and
tragically sank or did it? Yeah? Probably? Yeah, I mean
yeah probably. I mean they made a movie about it,
and I think I can knew that if it didn't happen. Yeah,
thanks Cameron. It doesn't make things up out of a
(00:20):
whole cloth, right, We've all been to Avatar. What's the
name of the planet? Pandora? Who had been to Pandora?
And the fact that I confuse the name of the
film with the planet should not dissuade you from the
veracity of that statement. But but yeah, there are a
lot of conspiracies about the Titanic, and some of them
(00:41):
are rabbit holes. Absolutely, So let's get all brock love
it with this one and search for some underwater treasure.
That's a comedy bang bang reference. I hope you're listening
to that podcast too. From uf thos to psychic powers
and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You
can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't
(01:02):
want you to know. Welcome back to the show. My
name is Matt, my name is no. They call me Ben.
You are you? And that makes this stuff They don't
(01:23):
want you to know. As always, we are joined by
our superproducer Tristan McNeil. Tristan, do you want to wave
to us? Okay, well, everybody will just have to believe
us when we say that Tristan was indeed waving. Tristan
just communicates in emojis. We found out it's it's pretty intense.
Like there's three that he uses. There's the O face emoji, yeah,
(01:44):
there's the hand on jim like finger yeah, and then
there's the shocked emoji. I see that one most often. Yeah,
So he exists swinging between those three emojis. You know,
I kind of like it when it's like when they
see if you go into a really great restaurant and
you know it's great because they may only have six
(02:04):
things on the menu, but they have mastery over all
of those. I just look at the pictures. I prefer
to order off menu. Have you ever been on a cruise?
I have no, Really, it's not it's not for me.
I didn't really think it was for me either, pun
doing it. But yes, interesting experience to be out in
(02:26):
the ocean with several thousand other people just on a
big floating metal thing. Now was it was it a
Was it like a family cruise or was it a
themed cruise, because you know those things occur, I could.
I don't know exactly what it was. It was um Norwegian,
I think was the name of the company. Did you
see any icebergs? I saw zero icebergs, and I was
(02:48):
looking for a good thing. For some reason, they don't
hang out in the Caribbean. Yes, that's now, that's what
I thought too. There's a Caribbean cruise was and I'm
glad you had a good time. How old were you?
That wasn't long ago? Maybe two three years? Oh, that's
where you went. I'm a bad friend. I remember you
(03:10):
said you were at sea, and I thought you were
just joking and let it go. To be clear, it
wasn't my idea, but it was fun. We should also
mentioned before we really get cooked with gas here. I
don't know if if any of you folks have heard
of this before, but a while ago, Matt and Nolan
I found out about a conspiracy themed cruise, conspira Sea
(03:35):
conspiracy cruise, and when you briefly, we briefly kicked around
the idea of going. But I don't know, especially if
cruises aren't Nol's thing, and it just seems like an
awful lot of like being corralled and kind of you know,
heard it around, and I'm not really into shuffleboard, so
(03:58):
I feel like they'd be limited stuff for me. I'd
like to travel on cargo ship or via icebreaker into
the polls, but I don't know if I would go
on them, you know, a normal cruise, just because they're
their own economies, you know, like they're their own worlds. Yeah,
there's no escape. I'd like to ride on a cruise missile.
Maybe that'd be cool. That'd be kind of cool with
(04:18):
the cowboy hate. So but whether or not we or
you are fans of cruises, one thing is for sure.
Cruises are super popular. People love the idea, right, hop
on a boat, get away from it all. See a
couple foreign countries. Maybe the practice of cruising recreationally entirely
(04:43):
for pleasure, you know, where you don't have to bring
home like spoils of war or or salmon to smoke
or something. It dates back for a while. It began
with the formation something called the Peninsular and Oriental Steam
Navigation Company in eighteen twenty two. Now they started out
as just a shipping company. They're gonna take your stuff,
(05:05):
put it on a boat, and take it somewhere else
wherever you need it to be. But then they realize, hey,
maybe there's something else to this. They were going on
routes between England and the Iberian Peninsula, and they adopted
that name Peninsular Steam Navigation Company from that peninsular routing
that they were taking. That's a great word to peninsula. Yeah,
(05:26):
I feel like that some law enforcement officer probably uses
that in a sobriety test, like repeat the following words
to me, right, rural juror peninsula. Yes, anyway they Yeah,
Matt is absolutely correct. They began actually as a they
began traveling to this peninsula and to Egypt to deliver
(05:50):
mail as a postal route. But they began becoming, you know,
known for this great route and you could ride along
for a nominal fee. The first vessel built just for
luxury cruising came only a few decades later, the Prinzacing
Victoria Louise of Germany, designed by a guy with the
(06:10):
name get this, Albert Balling yep designing ships stacking duckets. Yeah,
and that was a nineteen hundred and so now fast
forward to twenty seventeen. As we record this, cruise ships
are popular around the globe, and every market trend just
(06:31):
indicates that they will become even more popular in the
coming years. Wouldn't the full name be pleasure cruise. It's
a pleasure cruise. Yeah, that's a really good point, a
pleasure cruise. There's a wide variety of pleasures. Taking a
pleasure cruise to pleasure island. That's nice. And it is
strange to think of how harrowing a journey, a long
(06:52):
boat trip would be and has been throughout history, Like
how many people die when you take a long ship
journey back in the day, even not long before this
time in nineteen hundred, you would have serious issues with
having enough food and water on the ship for enough
(07:12):
of the people and be comfortable there. And if sickness
was a major and like you know, sanitary conditions and
spreading disease, you know, and people you hear about people
getting you know, scurvy and whatnot, and like you know, malnutrition. Yeah,
I would think the idea of a pleasure cruise had
to be a pretty big marketing push to make that
(07:34):
fly yea. And also probably you know, for the wealthy,
the ones who got to hang out up top, while
we know that the steerage you know down below was
where the I guess the employees and some of the
less fortunate passengers got to hang out. And honestly, guys,
it hasn't changed since then. Yeah, in the sea or
(07:56):
the air, have you have you flown coach only? Rough?
Why are there always new weird gradations of Luxurian planes.
There's like economy economy plus they don't ever say coach anymore.
They don't change anything though, they just change the wording.
I mean, all these planes that you fly on, they're
like the same ones from They still have ash trays
in the right. We're not talking about planes, but I
(08:20):
think it is a good comparison. So the market predictions
estimate that by twenty twenty, almost twenty five million people
will take a cruise each year. And of course, disasters
occur in every industry, and when something goes wrong in
the world of cruise ships, people can die. One of
the most famous cruise ship tragedies. Yes, that's true, folks.
(08:41):
We are getting to a point here. It's not just
us talking about whether we're going to take a cruise.
We are exploring one of the most infamous tragedies in
modern maritime history, the sinking of the Titanic. That's a bummer.
I didn't sign up for that. I thought we were
just going to talk about cruises. Well they and sign
up to sync or did they? Like? Wait, never mind,
(09:05):
if you want to refund on your ticket for the podcast,
then we'll have to sell tickets. There's some cool stuff here,
you guys, the stuff that I was unaware of, and
that certainly was not addressed in James Cameron's blockbuster smash
Titanic A Love Story, which allegedly have you heard the
rumor about titan they got dosed with LSD or something
(09:27):
like that. Oh. I well, with the making of the film,
I heard that James Cameron really just wanted to explore
the wreckage in a submarine. He made that movie too,
and he did the Mariannas Trench and his little tiny subect.
But no, I heard that he was such a monster
that like somebody dosed was trying to dose him with
LSD and ended up like dosing all of the food
(09:50):
on the spread or something like that for the cool
crew and cast with LSD and they ended up causing
some issues. That would that work? Woul that work someone
with don't worry, we won't put you on blast, but
someone with the experience in that in that field, let
us know if experience in dosing multiple people, Well, if
(10:10):
LSD would work in food. I had never heard that.
That's fascinating. Oh heait, guys, I found it. So Apparently
it was some much LSD laced chowder that was intended
for mister Cameron, but others ended up eating it, and
the assistant This is on an Ion nine article, by
the way, excellent side. The assistant director apparently got so
freaked out that he stabbed James Cameron in the face
(10:33):
with a pencil. Oh my gosh. Well, also, you shouldn't
eat other people's chowder. There are multiple lessons to learn
here and and the history of the well, I don't
know if the history of the real Titanic is as
interesting in bizarre as that historical note on the film,
but we do have the history of the actual Titanic too,
(10:55):
which is relatively LSD free. Yes, it dates back to
nineteen oh evan when a guy named James Bruce Ismay,
who was the son of this other guy named Thomas.
He founded the White Star line of ocean liners on
the idea that people would travel farther by ship if
the vessels were just luxurious enough for them to want
(11:16):
to stay on that ship, like a pleasure cruise. Yeah,
the idea of I don't want to be on a
ship for two days, but if I can go bowling
on that ship, maybe I will. If there's a tub,
if it's opulent, if there are servants, if I can drink,
and as much as I want whenever I want. Sure,
For some reason, I feel like people in the early
(11:38):
twentieth century did that anyway. Yeah, I just feel like
getting drunk on a cruise ship would be a recipe
for disaster because it's like, what if he even have
mild c sickness, wouldn't that be just exacerbated by you know,
alcohol consumption. I don't know, that's a I wonder if
you I imagine that many people become acclimated to it
(12:00):
if they're on for a week. Get your sea legs,
get your sea legs, yes, exactly. And mostly people are
on the slots or in the casino, just so you know,
on a cruise ship. So part of the reason that
Ismay was inspired to do this. He had a partner,
Lord Piri, who was chairman of Harland and Wolf shipbuilders,
(12:21):
and Puri kept talking about the Mauritania and the Lusitania,
which were the newest vessels of something called the Cunard line.
Ismay and Piri were convinced that they could create bigger
and better and more luxurious ships. So then they imagined
three giants, the Gigantic, which would isn't that an awesome name?
(12:46):
It later would change his name to the Britannant, right,
much more luxurious sounding, the Olympic and the Ti Tanic
the Titanic, and these ships would but they're gonna be
so posh, you guys, you have no idea how poshu
they're gonna be. They're gonna be fast, they're gonna be
so safe. We're gonna get you there in style. And
(13:06):
they're huge. I mean, yeah, Gigantic was an appropriate name.
It just doesn't have the same ring as Britannic. Yeah,
but then you you think Titanic is after titan which
is another just giant thing, saying Titan or Giant. I
wonder if they had another name for Olympic. And we're
just too embarrassed to put it in the history books.
(13:27):
Was it just big, bigly, big boy, big boy, big atron.
So the Titanic itself was, you know, not ironically named.
It was almost nine hundred feet long, and it was
almost ninety three feet wide. It weighed almost forty five
(13:50):
thousand tons. It had two reciprocating engines, each of which
were about four stories tall. That's incomprehensible for me. There
were there were three propellers. Two of them were like
a little over twenty three feet in diameter, and then
there was one. There was a four blade propeller that
was seventeen feet near the ship's seventeen feet in diameter
(14:14):
near the ship's rudder, and it could make it could
generate enough horsepower to get it to the insane speed
of twenty seven point six miles per hour, which I
know does not sound impressive, but again, this thing is
like nine hundred feet long to be that huge, yeah,
and then stopping it is an issue, right, And the
ship was so massively Titanic that it actually could not
(14:38):
be constructed on existing docks and launching sites, so they
actually had to build a whole new set of docks
called the White Star docks and the Great Gantry, which
was a series of fifteen massive cranes that allowed them
to accommodate all of the moving parts of the shipbuilding process.
(15:00):
So the Titanic was finished in nineteen twelve, and it
took an estimated eleven thousand people to build it. I
can't even picture what that would like. How do you
even like manage eleven thousand people? Is that like an
Egyptian period? I was thinking the same thing. It's insane
and all in all, the cost was an estimated seven
(15:22):
point five million dollars, which today would amount with inflation
to about one hundred and eighty nine million, one hundred
eighty six thousand, seven hundred and seven dollars and ninety cents.
And that's in twenty seventeen dollars. And here's the big thing.
They called it unsinkable. Spoiler really got to follow through
(15:44):
with that kind of promise. You know, they were all
they were so, so very wrong. And here lies the
kernel of today's episode. K E R in Yale kernel.
Let's do it. Commercial break and we are back, as
(16:09):
you know, well as we make very few assumptions on
this show, but for this we're just going to assume
that everyone knows that the Titanic is indeed sinkable and sank.
What you may not know is the true story of
how this disaster occurs. We're gonna set the scene for
you and walk through this pretty quickly, hopefully, and we're
(16:32):
relying a lot on some excellent work by our colleagues
at how Stuff Works website on their article how the
Titanic Worked, which you can read for more information. Things
are eventually going to get crazy, right, yes, cool? The
ship sets sail from its launching site in Belfast to Southampton,
England in April of nineteen twelve. Titanic picked up its
(16:53):
passengers from England, it moved along to France and then
to Queenstown, Ireland to get the rest. Collectively, there were
about two thousand, two hundred and eight passengers and eight
hundred ninety nine officers and crew. So, going back to
the class system we mentioned earlier, there were three hundred
and twenty nine first class travelers, several of whom were
(17:15):
titans of industry, the giants of industry, so I don't
say tighten all the time, two hundred and eighty five
second class travelers and seven hundred and ten third class travelers.
So let's break down some of these classes really fast.
Let's look at the cream of the crop of that
first class. We're talking primarily wealthy industrialists and the people
(17:36):
that they call their families hopefully actually their families, their entourages,
perhaps sure, their personal servants. And among these people were
well too well known John Jacob Astor, the fourth of
the Astor family that you may have heard of before
on this show, one of these wealthy families that made
their money on what ben opium? Opium, not all of it,
(17:59):
but a lot of it exactly. And then JP Morgan
another name that you have heard before, undoubtedly, And mister
Morgan was forced to cancel his passage due to insert
reason here. There are so many different reasons that have
been given for him having to cancel. He says one thing,
(18:19):
other people see him doing other things. Will explore it
a little later. Among the second class passengers were businessmen,
members of the clergy. There were also teachers and a
chauffeur who were traveling second class and then third class
or steerage. The part where who was that actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
(18:42):
That's where he would have been. Yep, the in the
Titanic film. First class tickets were pretty expensive, round twenty
five to forty five hundred dollars. That's between forty four
thousand and a little over eighty thousand today. Whoa an
eighty thousand dollars ticket? Now, granted that's top of the line. Yeah,
(19:06):
I'm sure you essentially have an apartment on the sea
at that point. Yeah, but then you look at the
third class ticket and it's going to be obtained for
around thirty five dollars at the time, or six hundred dollars. Now, wow,
it's selling. We're qvcing this for which one? For the
third class? The steerage six hundred, six hundred bucks today's dollars.
(19:27):
But no, I know, but I was saying, like, you know,
even for today's dollars, if I'm paying six hundred, I
would expect more than steerage. Yeah, but six hundred dollars
to how many day crews? You know, you're talking multiple
days a ship. It's not like all that stuff. But
let me also point out that for that ticket, I
don't know if we have this cer notes, but it
(19:49):
is true that the conditions did radically differ. There were
two bathtubs for everybody in third class, like two bathtubs
for seven hundred people. But that's also where all the
sweet Irish dancing took place. Yes, if we are, if
we are, to believe the excellent documentary by James Cameron. Right, yeah,
and all right, so fast forward. It's April fourteenth, nineteen twelve,
(20:13):
third day of the voyage. The water is around twenty
eight degrees fahrenheit. That's very cold. It's dangerously cold if
you're out in the open ocean. Around noon of that day,
the Titanic's Marconi wireless operators, they had a Marconi radio,
very cutting edge at this time, but also very new technology,
(20:34):
they received the first of what would be a total
of four cautionary messages about large ice floes ahead. They
got a second message of five to thirty five from
a ship that reported three icebergs just nineteen miles north
of Titanic's path and just one hour before the collision.
(20:54):
Vessel named the Californian message the Titanic, we are stopped
and surrounded by ice. And apparently the person who was
manning the Marconi Whi's what they called it at that time,
person who was manning the Marconi on the Titanic replied,
shut up, I am busy. I am working Cape race
the captain and Captain Smith wasn't worried about icebergs. After all,
(21:17):
he was piloting a mass or captaining rather a massive
steel behemoth. Instead, the story goes, he was concerned about
shattering speed records set by other massive maritime behemoths. H
I can imagine that, taking your mind off of what's
around you and just focusing on the instrumentation going on.
And he tried to be you know, he tried to
(21:39):
be responsible at is his job. So he told an
officer named Lyteler, who was stationed on the captain's bridge,
that if the night became too hazy, he should be
alerted immediately and they would slow the ship's speed. But
the night was clear, and so the Titanic sped on.
There were two officers, won by the name of Frederick Fleet,
(22:00):
the other Reginald Lee, who were in the observation port.
Fleet was getting to the end of his shift when
he saw the iceberg and said I So they sounded
the alarm, and they called down to the bridge, and
a full thirty seven seconds passed before the first officer,
William M. Murdoch shut off the engines, dropped the watertight
(22:22):
doors to the bottom compartments, because the ship was made
up of these different compartments that were able to flood
and keep the water from spreading elsewhere. And that's a
big issue that led to the ultimate sinking of the ship,
was that these things did not work as expected. So
he killed the engines, shut the doors, and turned the
(22:42):
ship away from its front end so that the iceberg too.
They took the hit on the side of the ship
right right. They did not have enough time to make
a complete stop or even to turn away. Stopping the
ship would have required a half mile in this iceberg
was nine hundred feet from the ship. That's that oh
no moment if you're in your car and you're in
(23:05):
traffic or something and you realize you have to stop,
but oh, I'm too close to fully apply the brakes here.
I'm gonna have to go to the side of this
vehicle or something. Yeah, And I mean what ended up
happening was the iceberg just kind of shredded the side
of the ship. It's dragged along the edge of it, right,
creating a huge scar that just hemorrhaged, you know, and
(23:26):
for a few minutes, it looked like their last second
maneuver may have worked. From the surface, the ship appeared
to have missed the iceberg, but underneath, whereas we know,
icebergs are much larger. Right, protruding fragment of ice ripped
a hole through the Titanic's hull, just like a null said,
if the ship was shuddering or showing initial irregularities in movement,
(23:51):
it was subtle and went undetected or excused as the
heavy groaning machinery. When Captain Smith surveyed the flood damage,
he and a film named Thomas Andrews said the hole
must be nearly three hundred feet wide, but in reality
it was a tear smaller. It was smaller. It was
like six lacerations about three and a half square feet.
(24:12):
But not only did the captain's navigation attempt not work,
it made things worse. It moved the Titanic from the
sturdiest place to withstand the impact to the most vulnerable point,
and even the smallest gash caused these terrible results. So
earlier we mentioned how the compartments could close right these
watertight things to prevent the spread of floodwater. Five of
(24:34):
the ship's compartments had already begun to flood, and Captain
Smith said the ship was going to sink. Unquestionably, we
have He predicted about an hour or an hour and
a half left before it would slip to the bottom
of the Atlantic. And here's the thing. The Titanic didn't
just sink. There are reports from my witnesses that testified
(24:56):
that it actually broke completely in half. The science actually
supports these accounts. You see the middle of the ship
that you've got all the stress of the water filled
compartments that we're talking about, right, that's a ton of weight.
And as one of the like ends began to keel
out of the water like come up and rise, you've
(25:17):
got all that weight in the center and it just
broke the thing in half. There's so much pressure there.
The stress reached around thirty five hundred pounds per square
inch on the boat deck itself, and that's fifty percent
more stress than this whole ship was meant to take.
There were plenty of life jackets to go around, that's
the good news. They were built of cork, which is weird,
(25:37):
but not so weird back then, one would hope. However,
there was of the two thousand, two hundred and eight
passengers and the almost nine hundred crew members, it was
room for only eleven hundred and seventy six for them
in the lifeboats. At twelve twenty five am, so April fifteenth, now,
(25:57):
the captain gave the crew orders to start. We're in
the lifeboats, leading the first class passengers to the boat deck. Uh.
And they were when Billy Zane kicked that little girl
off the lifeboat. I remember, was that Billy's Billy Zane? Yeah? No,
not not the disparage, but I mean Billy Zane, the
actor playing a a jerky first class passenger who was
(26:20):
Rose's original love interest, but as it turned out, the
scrappy young lad Leonardo Dicafrio won her heart at least
at least well, no, I think she was in love
with them and died she was in love with Is
okay to spoilt Titana? I think? So? My god, that's
sort of like spoiling the assassination of a Ramwick, right, right?
(26:42):
So there were fourteen lifeboats that could carry sixty five people,
to emergency sea boats that could carry thirty five people,
and four collapsible boats that could carry forty nine people.
By two am, all these boats have been lowered, half
of the ship's passenger and crew still remained. And that
part from the film is a true worry. The band
did play on as the ship sank. Those folks have
(27:06):
some real they have real spine, they have a lot
of sand. Yeah. I'm trying to think of a family
friendly way to say, yeah, that's what it's gonna go.
At first, actually, they played the song of choice. They
played if this is ever in a very bizarre macabre
trivia game for you. The song of choice was Nearer
(27:28):
my God to Thee, which is a old hymn. When
a ship called the Carpathia arrived to rescue survivors, they
found a floating disaster. You know. Lifeboats are adrift, passengers
are shivering to death, surely deeply traumatized. The ship got
fourteen boats and seven hundred and twelve survivors, which means
(27:48):
more than fifteen hundred passengers and crew were dead. And
I'm sure maybe not that specifically, but you know, regulations
now would require you not to book more people than
you have safety equipment for, right, I mean, yeah, that's
that pretty big oversight, you know. Ye, people buy tickets
with that, you know, six hundred dollars inflated ticket value
(28:10):
price for that low level. Also, that's where the flooding
happened too, was down in steerage, and they were, you know,
having to deal with that, and then they get up
top escape only to realize that they are doomed. Yeah. Yeah.
Apparently the third class passengers were not allowed up until
the first and class at first and second class passengers
have been accounted for, which is just disgusting. Every time,
(28:34):
every time I think I've got a handle on humanity's
dark potential, man, something like this happens. This show is
changing me. Yeah. Yeah, Well, there's something to be said
about cruising in a place where if you do fall
into the water, it's over pretty quickly like that. I
don't know that a bad idea. Yeah, just seems like
(28:58):
a really bad idea unless you've got like contingency upon contingency,
you know. But then also, you know, this is the
top of the line. It's best in class ship, right
right right, but apparently not unbreakable or UNA. So that's
the official story. It's a tremendous loss of life, financial catastrophe,
(29:24):
a cultural catastrophe. The Titanic will spend almost a century
rotting at the bottom of the ocean, creating, you know,
a new shipwreck ecosystem. Right, and that is the official story.
But what if there were something more to the story.
Here's where it gets crazy. So, as with any large
scale disaster in the modern age, we all know this,
(29:46):
alternative theories about the Titanic begin to circulate in the
years following the event. So we got together and looked
at some of the most prevalent, uh, some of the
most plausible, which there are a few that might surprise you,
and of course the strangest. So what do we have?
Not so fast, you guys. First we have to hear
(30:09):
a word from our sponsor. You rogue. The first theory
surrounding the sinking of the Titanic is one you may
have heard, and it has to do with the global
banking elites that sank their ship to kill off their opponents.
(30:32):
And people who think that this is true believe that
this was essentially an assassination of sorts a scatter shot,
a wide shot assassination attempt on several highly important people
in the banking world. I feel like there was a
like a British crime show I saw where there was
a storyline involving a mass murderer that was actually trying
(30:56):
to assassinate a very specific group of people. Just killed
a bunch of people to cover the tracks of the
motive that make it look like an accident. Well, we
know that people have bizarre plane crashes often. Um, so this,
this then would be an act of terrorism. Who were
they actually after? You know what? They weren't killing the
(31:19):
purposely killing the entire boat. They wanted a few people, right,
like like Nolan is mentioning, well, well you got the aster,
the gentleman Aster, John Jacob Isidor Strauss, and Benjamin Guggenheim
another familiar name you know, rings a little something there
of the Guggenheim like museum and no that's m Yes,
(31:41):
all were millionaires, and they were all opposed to this
idea of creating a central bank, a private central bank,
within the United States because it's gonna negatively affect their
personal fortunes and you know, the fingers that they've got
in the pies of the banking world inside the US.
We hate that analogy. I know it's crazy, but it's high.
Like have you ever seen somebody actually have their finger
(32:03):
in a pie saw a movie back in the early
two thousand. It's American pine. It wasn't a finger, right, Yes,
you're right, Okay, the pictures, pictures, the humanity and the pie.
But but yeah, I see, I see what you're saying.
So these three men, in particular, according to this theory,
(32:26):
were against the formation of the Federal Reserve. Oh, yes,
the creature from Jekyl Island. Yes, so named because the
plans for the Federal Reserve were controversially created in a
fancy pants island off the coast of Georgia, the state,
not the country, in nineteen thirteen. So it is a
(32:50):
controversial thing, privatizing, you know, the central bank for an
entire country. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The word we use
now is quasi government. Quasi government. Okay. So according to
this h JP Morgan and Rockefeller in the various franchises
excuse me, families of the Rothschild thing. We're conspiring to
(33:14):
remove what could be substantive opposition. Here's the thing. It's
true that JP Morgan had a personal suite aboard the
ship with his own private deck. If he could believe that,
and he had a customized you know, living area in there.
(33:35):
He was booked on the ship's maiden voyage, but instead
he canceled the trip. And you may you heard us
earlier allude to what the various reasons why what did
what did you guys hear? Oh man, I heard all
kinds of stuff. I mean I heard he said he
wasn't feeling so well, so he was gonna stay home
and convalesce. But he may have just stayed in France.
(33:58):
Remember how we were saying how the Titanic left went
over to France, then went to Ireland. Well, it seems
that he stayed in the French resort to enjoy, you know,
some morning massages, some sulfur baths, that the kind of
things you do when you're a Morgan. Sulfur bath. Sulfur bath,
it's like a bathroom with sulfur instead of water. Yeah, No,
(34:19):
I am so, I am lying. I am I'm not.
Are you lying because you don't know? No, I imagine
I don't know for sure, but I imagine for exfoliation
or something feeling if it's supposed to be restorative. I mean,
this is a time when people really believed in curative springs,
so it was probably a natural, naturally occurane water source
(34:41):
that had sulfurous content in the water. Smells of enemas
going on around this yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, John Harvey
Kellogg and it smells great in a sulfur bathroom and
yogurt all over your parts. Not to mention the guy
who invented graham crackers, that's a whole another, that's a
whole another. I don't know his story. We'll leave that
for another day. Zip block full of gummy bears. The
(35:04):
whole point is that Morgan's abrupt cancelation, the decision to
not be on the ship, seems suspicious at all. Yeah,
and we will also just a side note, this is
so interesting, we will also do another episode in the
future if you would like on the bizarre, strange origins
of commonplace snacks and silverware and other seemingly innocuous products.
(35:27):
You are absolutely right, Matt. This last minute cancelation, whatever
reason he did, apparently the story is and there was
last minute, if fueled speculation that he had advanced knowledge
of the fate of the Titanic, And there are there
are a few variations in this theory. In some versions,
the three men on the boat were opposed to income
(35:50):
tax legislation. Chronologically, that one doesn't really work out. According
to other people, the Jesuit, for some reason, lured these
men on their ship. We should point out that there
is also not there's not a lot of hard evidence
on this flin in particular, and while we do know
(36:14):
that maybe plane crashes can occur, we know that there
have been questionable deaths or air quote accidents before. This
seems like it's asking a lot like who would who
would bring down a ship that's worth one hundred and
(36:36):
ninety million dollars to kill three people. That's exactly my
thought of spending that much money to make the ship
and only to have it, you know, destroyed, unless you're
getting insurance. There's also like there's better ways to assassinate
people easier, not that they don't rely on hitting an iceberg. Right, Yeah,
(36:57):
it seems like a lot of happenstance going on air.
It's like a Rube Goldberg, really is I mean, it
would be brilliant, It would be brilliant, But I fear
this is a stretch. Some of the other ones, though,
are a little less stretchy. Well, here's here's the other thing, Like,
did what if the Titanic never sank at all, that's
a real one that I will. It's a real one, man.
(37:20):
It's on here. We're looking at the outline with which
I was not familiar. So we said earlier that there
were three boats in this giant class, right, Uh, the Gigantica,
the Massifania, the Big Boy, Big Boy, and uh huh
and little Nuggets whatever their names are. Their official names
(37:42):
when they launched were the Olympic, the Britannic, and the Titanic. Uh.
What if some people argued the Titanic, rather than sinking,
was the victim or beneficiary of identity theft. What if
it was switched at the last minute for its sister ship,
the Olympia. I just don't understand why you would do that.
(38:05):
The Titanic is the big reason, Like this is the
thing you're showing off right. According to the most famous
proponent of this theory, a writer named Robin Gardener, there's
much more to the story. Gardener wrote a book called Titanic,
The Ship that Never Sank? Can you hear the question
mark we put in there? There we go perfect? So
(38:26):
this author looks at several other events and coincidences that
occurred in the months, days, hours leading up to the disaster,
and concludes the ship that sank was actually the Olympic
disguised as the Titanic, and it was an insurance scam
by the owners of the owners of the concern, which
(38:46):
was the International Mercantile Marine Group who bought White Star
Line in nineteen o two, and the controller of the
Marine Group was JP Morgan Old JP Old ap Heavy
j himself. Okay, all right, all right, So the Olympic,
check this out, was the slightly older sister of the
(39:06):
Titanic and was launched in October of nineteen ten, so
a couple of years earlier. The exterior profile was nearly
identical to the Titanic, saved for a few minor details
when we're talking about stuff like the number of portholes
on one area of the ship. So here's one example
of Gardner's argument. Gardner says the Buss ships were built
(39:27):
with linoleum floors, but shortly before she was due to
set sail, Jay Bruce Ismay, the director of White Star Line,
inexplicably ordered the floors aboard Titanic be carpeted over. There's
something else. The motivation in This theory is that the
Olympic had already been involved in a couple of accidents,
(39:49):
and that this would essentially be an insurance scam. So
you'd collect the insurance of the Titanic for sinking the Olympic, Right,
but you would still be, you know, killing hundreds of people. Yeah,
you would essentially be killing hundreds of people for a
little less than our day, our modern equivalent of two
(40:10):
hundred million dollars. I mean, what do you think the
value of a human life was in nineteen twelve? Just
thinking the same thing. We should calculate that and bring
it back in another episode. I think that's frightening. What
is our value? Yeah? Oh boy, that's a good one.
I like that as a title. Yeah, what is the
value of human life? But no, I mean I don't know.
(40:32):
I said things were getting a little less stretchy because
I don't know captains of industry or monsters a lot
of the time. And I don't think I would put
it past a JP Morgan type to value an investment
over the lives of hundreds of people. Oh absolutely, yeah,
I can. I mean, in principle I can absolutely agree,
(40:54):
because I mean, yeah, it would be harder to do
if it wasn't like actually an active event when it
took I'm saying, like, you can't just blow up the
ship at drydock. People ask questions about that, but like,
you know, but then again, how do you force it
to hit an iceberg? Like did they mess with the route?
(41:15):
Like what how would you accomplish this? Right? I think
that's a perfect setup, nol, because we're going to go
into theories about accidental occurrences, but I think within those
we're also going to find something that could lend a
little credence to or answer perhaps the question of how
someone would intentionally do this. And just to jump in
(41:37):
here talking about insurance, for you know, we're discussing how
people are definitely going to collect insurance on this. This
was a huge investment, right, No matter what happens to
the Titanic, if something bad happens, the people that own
it are for sure going to try and collect as
much as they possibly can on it, right, even like
it doesn't matter they in their mind. I can't say
(42:01):
what they're thinking, but it doesn't matter how many people
got hurt or died for the collecting of their insurance. Right,
I see what you're saying yeah, and it is tough
to ascribe motive without you know, hard documentation. Well, let's
go into even less stretchy I like that turn less
stretchy theories, the idea of possible accidental occurrences one and
(42:24):
this is so terrible possible wrong turn. Louise Patten, who's
the granddaughter of the ship's most senior surviving officer, the
man we mentioned, Charles A. Lighthowler, claims that he told
his wife a crew member turned the ship quote the
wrong way and into the course of the iceberg after
officer William Murdock first spotted it and gave a hard
(42:45):
starboard order. The cruise Liner was operating under two communication
systems that were in direct conflict with one another, and
in twenty ten Louise Patton told The Guardian UK paper
that a command to turn hard as starboard miant turn
the wheel right under one system and left under the other.
(43:06):
Because I would imagine they would have maps of known
iceberg areas right or like, you know, if there was
a cluster, they probably would have been charted. I would
think it would be a little difficult because they could
be mobile. That's true, but so but so the communication
systems we're talking about here, there are largely visual and verbal. Well, yeah,
(43:27):
there were on these were on the ship too, But
we have to keep in mind they got numerous warnings.
There were at least four different warnings throughout the day
leading up to the accident after midnight. So interesting, Yeah,
so they kept on. Maybe the captain was a bit
(43:48):
arrogant speaking. I just said, it's tough to ascribe motive,
and now I'm like, listen to this guy. Well, there
are other things too, right, There were questions about whether
or not the actual materials that were used to build
the ship were possibly not up to snuff, or even
a shortage of viewing binoculars, a shortage of an ability
(44:09):
to view icebergs that had the potential to be a problem,
which is tough, you know when you think about it.
If that is true, if there were weak ship building materials,
if there was a shortage of binoculars and a shortage
of lifeboats, this is starting to sound more and more
like some corners were being cut outside of the public eye.
Here is the most plausible, and this might answer that
(44:32):
earlier question about how someone could purposefully plan to pull
an insurance scam. If that's what if that actually happened.
Is the most plausible, or at least the least implausible
that a coal fire either significantly contributed to or is
directly responsible for the disaster. There's this journalist named sen
(44:57):
On Maloney. I'm going to call you miss maloneium because
I'm not sure if I'm pronounce your name correctly. Maloney
is a documentary called Titanic The New Evidence, and in
it he argues that a fire been smoldering and bunker
number six, one of the ship's coal bunker boiler rooms
of the Titanic since the ship left Belfast, so it
(45:20):
was burning the whole time. And it sounds crazy, but
it's true that coal coal has the ability to combust
like this. Near that bunker is where the iceberg tore
the biggest hole in the ship on its maiden voyage.
According to The Independent, Maloney claims photos of the Titanic
(45:40):
showed dark marks on the side of the ship not
facing the dock, hinting at existing fire and then should
never been put to sea. And we have a quote
from Maloney for you. The official Titanic Inquiry branded the
sinking as an act of God. This isn't a simple
story of colliding with an iceberg and sinking. It's a
(46:01):
perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together, fire, ice, and
criminal negligence. It was very game of throne. Still that
it really stoked to watch the finale tonight. So yeah,
I wasn't even expecting the fire an ice bit, he
goes on. I don't know why he talks like this,
but he just he does. I guess. We have experts
(46:22):
telling us that when you get that level of temperature
against steel, it makes it brittle and reduces its strength
by up to seventy five. The fire was known about
and briefly addressed at the inquiry, but it was played down.
It is absolutely true that there was a fire on
the ship. What we count as the newer revelatory or
(46:44):
theoretical part of this is blaming the fire for the
sinking of the ship once it hit the iceberg. Did
the fire create weakness in the metal in the material?
According to an engineer for the Geological Society Even America
and Ohio State University fellow named Robert Eisenhei, attempts to
control the coal fire and the bunker could have been
(47:07):
the reason the Titanic sailed so quickly through an area
littered with icebergs, So that would you know in the
film they're trying to set a speed record, right, and
like some kind of oceanic icarus, they go too far,
too high. My analogy is not working. So the reasoning
(47:28):
here would be that they're going that quickly because they're
having an emergency. Essentially, there's a huge issue with this fire.
We have to get to a dock somewhere and take
care of this white possibly and to connect the dots,
maybe JP Morgan one could argue knew about the fire
and didn't go and to connect the dots further, if
(47:49):
we're playing a little bit of a breadcrumb rabbit hole game,
maybe the fire was intentional. To be fair, there is
absolutely no hard proof of this at all. This is
this is speculative, at least the JP Morgan's reaction to
the fire. Right. There are a lot of myths about
(48:11):
this sort of stuff that are becoming folklore. At this point. However,
we do know that there really was a fire, and
we know that this is not the end of the
alternative theories because now we are wading into the very
very strange stuff with even allegations of the paranormal. Yeah,
(48:32):
did some man tell the future or somehow prescribe the
events that would occur to the Titanic In a novel
written in eighteen ninety eight known as Futility or Wreck
of the titan It was a guy named Morgan Robertson,
and fourteen years before the Titanic menace demise, he wrote
(48:54):
a novel that had a lot of similarities to what
happened to the Titanic, and it had to do with
insurance fraud. Mmmmmmm. And they think that this guy predicted
It was revised by the author in nineteen twelve after
the Titanic sank, to make the ship a little bigger,
(49:14):
a little different. Yeah, just like make it a little
more similar to the events of the Titanic, probably to
sell copies. And so still there are multiple purported similarities
between the events depicted in the story and the true
story of Titanic, which, of course war some of us
will call to mind the famous narrative of Arthur Gordon
(49:36):
Pim of Nantucket, written by Edgar Allan Poe, a bizarre
coincidence in a very dark one where Poe writes a
story about some people lost at sea and survival cannibalism,
and then later something very much like that happens. And
don't you spoil that post story for me. I think
(49:59):
Poe did a good job of spoiling it himself. What
are you saying. I mean, it's just not my favorite
of his story. He's following him a hack. No, no,
just so you know, in Robertson's tale Futility, Yeah, one
of the main characters or one of the characters gets
off onto the iceberg with I believe a child and
(50:19):
then is forced to do some battle with a polar
bear that is also making residence on the iceberg. That's
kind of fun and terrifying. Yeah, but you know, it's
a story that I would want to read if I
was in eighteen hundreds. Speaking of Game of Thrones, is
polar bears, zombie polar bears. It's gonna leave that right there.
(50:41):
I have no idea what you're talking about. Not really
a spoiler. It's just zombie polar bears. Okay, I've just
I've been pretending to know a Game of Thrones is
for the past several years. So Nat, please don't give
me your disappointed dad side. I for one feel betrayed.
(51:03):
Matt Matt's the kind of guy who would not be
mad at you, but just disappointed, which is somehow so
much worse. Blame parents right well, speaking in fantastic segues,
there are a couple others that are They're pretty strange.
This isn't so much a conspiracy theory as a paranormal stuff.
There was another writer in eighteen eighty six, a British
(51:25):
writer named William T. Stead who had a short story
called How the Atlantic Mail Steamer Went Down. A mail
steamer in the Atlantic collides with another vessel, shortage of
lifeboats on board caused an enormous loss of life. More
than a decade later, Stead was a passenger on the
Titanic and he was one of the fifth around fifteen
(51:47):
hundred who did not make it. Whoa and then the
very last one which we saved. Because it's just so,
it's so strange, and it feels more like creepy pasta
or a campfire story. One of the mystical versions of
the crash is associated with the legendary folkloreic Curse of
(52:07):
the Pharaohs. An ill fated ship was carrying the mummy
of an ancient Egyptian priestess that belonged to Lord Centerville,
shipping it to New York via the Titanic, remember the
whole shipping days of these boats still happening. To avoid
the damage, the box with the exhibit was placed on
the captain's bridge allegedly allegedly allegedly, and at the head
(52:33):
of the mummy there was a statue of Osiris according
to the story. Osiris, of course, as we remember, as
the Egyptian god of death. The words inscribed on this
were allegedly allegedly allegedly rise from the ashes and let
your eyes strike those who stand in your way. So
is it talking about the iceberg or the boat? Well,
(52:56):
you know, we could do an entire episode. I would
be surprised if our friends at suff you missed in
history classes stuff you should know, haven't already done an
episode on the alleged curse of the Pharaohs. We've done one,
haven't we. I know, we did a video. We did
a video, but we haven't done write it down. Guys,
here we go, do do Yeah, So we have some
(53:19):
great ideas for upcoming stuff. There we have. We have
the bizarre origins of otherwise innocuous things. Kello Cereal Graham
crackers shout out to our friends at food Stuff who
delve into some excellent history and culture of food if
you want to check that out. And then we also
have the the Pharaoh's curse, so we hope that you have.
(53:46):
We hope that you have enjoyed exploring these alternative theories.
At this point, most people are the vast majority of
humanity believe the official narrative, with the strongest other contender
being the idea that there was a fire contributing to
(54:08):
the disaster. The other stuff is interesting and it leads
us to a bunch of different possible threads, right, but
in the end way, what do you what do you
guys think? For me, it remains a tragedy that happened
because of a lot of a domino effect of things
(54:29):
that were occurring. And maybe it's just I'm too deep
in the official story, but I still see it as
that way. Nothing has convinced me thus far about this stuff,
although the fire thing that's the closest I would say, well,
the official story also as corroborating firsthand witnesses in terms
(54:51):
of survivors, people who were actually there. I think it
would be amazing if somebody could replace an entire ship
and disguise it. It's but it's so amazing and astonishing
because it borders on insanity in terms of planning, and
it seems very difficult. What do you think? No, I
(55:13):
think it was those fat cats standards of industry, just
like wanting to kill everybody for insurance money, and they
knew they were gonna get a life boat. You know,
they just colluded to I don't know, man, I it's
I guess it just depends on who who holds the policy,
like who specifically holds the policy to benefit from thinking.
(55:34):
But still, even at that level, it feels you guys,
remember that board game mouse Trap that barely ever worked. Yeah,
it feels like a level of unnecessary complexity comparable to
mouse Trap. Even in those days, I mean you had
some semblance of like, you know, sniper kind of equivalent
of it, or poisoning or someone gets someone with a
(55:58):
terminal disease to perform a hit so that their family
can benefit. Oh yeah, no, that wouldn't get you the
insurance money. But you know, what was the problem? What
was the issue? What? You know? It seems like an
awful you could get if you wanted to make a
quick buck on an insurance scam. You think you do
it with like life insurance for a human or like
(56:18):
you know, like like building a gazillion dollar luxury liner
and then arranging it to sink with people on it
so to collect the insurance money. It just doesn't seem
to add up to Maybe they've got into deep. They
build three of them, right, and that is true. That
is true, and that would be an equivalent of just
(56:40):
under six hundred million dollars. But still, oh yes, that's
our other episode. We're going to find out how much
each of us is worth justin I think justin raw
materials is probably the best way, you know, like our
people ever gonna boil us down for copper. We did
the illegal organ trading stuff, maybe we could we could
(57:02):
figure out, like what would each of our organs be
worth on the black market, and then what would be
the lifetime value of us, like in like you know,
slave labor. I don't know, jeez. Yeah, yeah, that's a
that's a great episode to do. Check out the Red
Market if you have not, if you haven't listened to
it yet, but do make sure you're not listening to
(57:23):
it while you're eating it. Is there is some very
disturbing content in there, and most importantly, we would like
to know what you think about these stories. One of
the more interesting things to us, I believe in these
sorts of situations is that so much time has passed,
you know that there's a pretty clearly cemented concept or
(57:49):
narrative that every upon which everybody agrees. But as we know,
those sorts of things can be overturned often throughout human civilization.
In a it's it's terrifying how often that can happen.
We have to remember, this is a species that totally
thought Troy was a made up city for centuries and
then some guy found it and it's real. So we'd
(58:11):
like to hear your take, not just on this, what
on other maritime disasters of human history, or your opinion
on cruises. And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
(58:31):
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
stdwy TK. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email. We are
Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want You
to Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(58:52):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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