Pod Insights Conspiracy Theories Rewind: The Titanic About this episode This July, we’re revisiting five classic topics in our Conspiracy Theories: Rewind series! First up, one of our most-requested stories: The Titanic. The “unsinkable” ship was brought down by a 6-second brush with an iceberg in April 1912. Did somebody know the world’s largest ocean liner would sink that day?
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Transcript 0:06 Speaker 00 It’s 1985, and oceanographer Bob Ballard is scouring the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. He is on a top-secret mission for the US Navy, searching for two American nuclear submarines that sank in the 1960s. Thanks to Bob’s underwater imaging system, which he calls the Argo, the team finds the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher. From thousands of feet below the surface, the Argo sends black-and-white footage back up to the crew. They have found a needle in a haystack. And Bob’s hoping to pull it off again the following week. For years, he’s been looking for a different shipwreck:
0:52 Speaker 00 the Titanic. Its exact location has been a mystery ever since it sank 73 years earlier. In exchange for using the Argo to find the submarines, the Navy has agreed to fund Bob’s next search for the Titanic. For a few days at least, why not? Looking for the “Ship of Dreams” happens to be a great cover story for their real mission. Bob isn’t so sure he’ll have as much luck finding the Titanic, though. He’s already searched for it before, and failed. Watching the images roll in from those two sunken submarines sets off a light bulb: a new way of looking at things.
1:35 Speaker 00 Bob realizes, the subs did not settle into one contained area at the bottom of the ocean. As lighter parts broke off from the vessels, they drifted outward, creating a surprisingly large debris field. With the Argo, it’s easier to spot a whole debris field than it is to find one intact object. On September 1st, Bob is awoken by his crew. He throws his uniform over his pajamas and races to the deck. There, on a screen, he can make out what looks like a boiler, covered in decades of ocean muck.
2:15 Speaker 00 Comparing the object to a photograph from 1912, Bob knows he has finally found it. The Titanic, the unsinkable ship that now rests nearly 2.4 miles below the surface. Bob announces his discovery to the world, reigniting interest in the Titanic. Though the shock of the tragic day in April 1912 that claimed 1,500 lives never really wore off. Now, with details of the disaster back in the news, some begin to wonder, is there more to the story of why the Titanic sank?
2:59 Speaker 00 Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts, or check us out on Instagram, at the conspiracy pod. This July, we're taking another look at five fan favorite topics as part of our series we're calling Conspiracy Theories Rewind. Today, we're kicking things off with what may be our most requested story. Over 100 years after the sinking of the Titanic, public interest has hardly waned. It's probably the most famous accident in history.
3:43 Speaker 00 But there are those who believe this tragedy was planned, that it was no accident at all. While others believe the ship that sank wasn't even the Titanic. Stay with us.
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5:02 Speaker 00 On April 10th, 1912, the RMS Titanic is finally ready to set sail from its dock in Southampton, England. Over 880 feet long and 17 stories tall, the luxurious passenger liner has been years in the making, advertised to be larger than even the world's tallest building. Friends and families of the passengers gather on the docks, bidding their loved ones farewell. And they come from all walks of life: rich, poor, white collar, blue collar. The ingenuity of the Titanic is in its many levels of accommodation, perfect to suit anyone's budget and meet anyone's needs.
5:44 Speaker 00 Many passengers hold one-way tickets to America. They're on the brink of a new life, sailing toward a brighter future. The excitement in the air is palpable. At a few minutes past noon, the Titanic sets sail. But it isn't exactly a smooth start. Before it even leaves the port, the giant ocean liner comes dangerously close to sideswiping a nearby boat. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems like a clear omen, a sign of what's to come. And yet, in the moment, nobody can predict that in just under five days, more than two-thirds of the 2,200 souls onboard will lose their lives,
6:28 Speaker 00 and the Titanic will rest at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. As far as they know, the ship is unsinkable. The unsinkable claims stem from the Titanic's innovative design. The bottom is surrounded by 16 watertight compartments. If catastrophe occurs and a compartment fills with water, it can be sealed off to keep the flooding contained. Reports boast that up to four of them can be compromised, and the Titanic will stay afloat. But this belief that the improbable is impossible may be one of the many catalysts behind the world-famous tragedy to come.
7:11 Speaker 00 Four days later, it's April 14th, a clear, cold, moonless night. Jack Phillips and Harold Bride typically man the ship's Marconi Room. They operate the wireless telegraph and are responsible for sending and receiving messages. During the day, their system can reach about 300 miles across the water. At night, they can communicate even farther. It's a convenience offered to everyone onboard, for a price. Wealthier passengers can have personal messages transmitted as a sort of novelty. It's one of the ship's many technological features. But that leaves Jack and Harold very, very busy.
7:53 Speaker 00 And this feature has a bug: crowded wireless channels. That means they sometimes miss important dispatches. And there is no rule about leaving a line open for emergencies. We know that on this night, vessels crossing the Atlantic send warning messages to the Titanic's Marconi Room. There are icebergs. Proceed with caution. And we know that the operators onboard the Titanic relay at least one of these messages to Captain Edward J. Smith. He makes the call to follow a more southerly route, but to keep the ship's current speed.
8:35 Speaker 00 It's likely there are additional warnings that never make their way to the wireless operator's ears. The fact that the waters are calm on this night might seem like a good thing, but the stillness can actually make spotting an iceberg more difficult, especially if you are the lookout on the Titanic and somebody has misplaced the binoculars. At 11:39 PM, an iceberg is spotted from the crow's nest. The lookout rings a bell, alerting First Officer William Murdock on the bridge. Captain Smith isn't present, so Murdock signals to cut the engines and orders the helmsman to steer around the iceberg. And they nearly make it.
9:20 Speaker 00 For a moment, the few people who know what just occurred think it was a close call, and they're safe. But several stories below them, a jagged edge of the iceberg has scraped along the starboard side near the bow. Most people on board barely feel a thing. In 2025, a National Geographic documentary uses scans of the Titanic wreckage, along with computer simulations, to get a better understanding of the damage. According to the experts on Titanic: The Digital Resurrection, the impact lasts 6.3 seconds. The iceberg leaves a series of relatively small punctures.
10:04 Speaker 00 The first is no more than a couple of feet in length. At first sight, it might not seem like any of these holes could bring down the Titanic, but the Nat Geo experts conclude that as the ship turns, the iceberg is able to pierce not just four, but six of the watertight compartments, two more than it can safely lose. Now, you may have heard the theory that the Titanic could have stayed afloat had it not turned and instead hit the iceberg head-on. This idea was first suggested by Edward Wilding, one of the ship's naval architects.
10:44 Speaker 00 Well, the Nat Geo documentary uses its simulation to test his hypothesis too. And while the head-on impact would have caused a great deal of damage and would have still resulted in loss of life, the simulation shows only four of the compartments would have flooded. The Titanic might have stood a chance. But now, the watertight compartments begin to fail. As they overflow, frigid ocean water spills from one into the next, and the next, and so on. The bow grows heavy, the weight pulling the front of the ship downward.
11:26 Speaker 00 Minutes after the iceberg collision, the boiler rooms begin taking on water, too. Boiler six is completely flooded, and five is well on its way. The water moves back through the rest of the boiler rooms in a domino effect. Chief Engineer Joseph Bell and his officers retreat to Boiler Two and work tirelessly up until the bitter end. He knows now the ship won't make it. He won't make it. So he sets his mind to keeping electricity running throughout the ship as long as possible. If he can keep the lights on, he might be able to save a few more lives.
12:08 Speaker 00 At fifteen minutes past midnight, Captain Smith orders Jack Phillips to begin sending out a distress signal. Phillips taps out the letters CQD in Morse code in a short message to anyone in range. The call to all stations is picked up by the Carpathia, a Cunard ship just sixty miles away. The Carpathia immediately changes course, but with the hazardous route, it will take nearly four hours for it to arrive. Up on the decks, rockets are launched. It's believed there may be ships closer than the Carpathia that might see this call for help, but if that is true, none of them respond.
12:52 Speaker 00 The first lifeboat is launched at twelve forty-five. Notoriously, the Titanic is outfitted with a mere twenty boats. If every single one were to be launched at capacity, they could still only hold one thousand one hundred seventy-eight people. That's about one thousand seats short.
13:15 Speaker 00 Added to that, the first boat takes off with just 27 people, though it's built for 65, because the panic hasn't set in yet. Passengers take their time leaving their cabins. They believe the Titanic is unsinkable, because they've been told over and over that it is.
13:37 Speaker 00 But by 1 a.m., waves lap at the bottom of the famous grand staircase. Getting to safety now means trudging through 28-degree water. Desperation grows as everyone realizes this is really happening. Chaos breaks out as the entire ship takes on a noticeable downward tilt. As another lifeboat is lowered, men try to jump onboard despite calls for women and children first. An officer fires his gun into the fray. By 2 o'clock, the bow sinks farther into the water, and the rear propellers rise up above the waterline. The remaining collapsible boats are washed away
14:22 Speaker 00 as those left onboard scramble through freezing water to hang on to anything that floats. It's all about survival now. Captain Smith dismisses the last of his crew, reportedly telling them that it's every man for himself. He's last seen on the bridge, waiting to go down with his ship.
14:45 Speaker 00 A total of 705 people make it out alive in lifeboats. That's less than one-third of the passengers and crew onboard. Those who left early are now far enough away that they have a clear view as the Titanic's stern lifts higher and higher off the water. Then, around 2:18 a.m., the lights flicker out. It's a moonless night. The Titanic becomes a towering shadow, and the poor souls left onboard probably can't see what happens next. As the Titanic becomes almost vertical, the strain is so great that it breaks across the midsection,
15:29 Speaker 00 right between the third and fourth funnels. The massive front end of the ship disappears into the sea. The stern crashes back down to the water, and it too begins to slip below the surface. The back of the Titanic rises straight up, and moments later, the rest of the ship is swallowed by the ocean, not to be seen again for over 70 years. Between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m., the Carpathia arrives to rescue survivors. It's been well over an hour since the Titanic sank, and in that time, just a few lifeboats have gone back to check for signs of life among the debris. A handful of people are pulled from the water,
16:14 Speaker 00 but very few survive the cold. It's difficult to know precisely how many lives are lost, but the generally accepted estimate is 1,500. As news makes it back to the mainland, the immense death toll sends the world reeling. And I can see why it would be hard to process. One day, the Titanic is one of the safest ships in the world; the next, every headline screams that more than 1,000 men, women, and children onboard have died. The public demands answers. Just two days later, the United States Senate announces an investigation into the Titanic disaster.
16:57 Speaker 00 Over 80 witnesses are called upon to testify, and during these hearings, a story comes out about the sinking that is treated as a disproven theory for years. A few survivors claim they saw, or at least heard, the ship break in two. And we now know that really is what happened. But in 1912, these witnesses are largely met with incredulity. For years, people tell them they're wrong, thanks in large part to the opposing testimony of Charles Lighttoller. He's the highest-ranking crew member to survive. He'd stayed on the Titanic's stern until nearly the last second, when he dove into the water.
17:43 Speaker 00 He might have gotten pulled into the deep if it weren't for a boiler exploding from somewhere below him. The thrust of that explosion pushed him upward, right next to a lifeboat. Lightoller insists the ship did not break, and people believe him. After all, he had a front row seat, he's a high-ranking officer, and he says the Titanic breaking in two is flat-out impossible. It isn't until 1985 that the other version of the story is proved correct. When Bob Ballard locates the wreckage of the Titanic, he comes back with photographic proof that the ship did, in fact, break apart.
18:25 Speaker 00 The bow and the stern rest approximately a third of a mile apart on the ocean floor. Lightoller, the apparent expert, was wrong. And this turn of events may have lent an air of possibility to other theories about the Titanic. Like, if they got this huge fact wrong, what else don't we know? And with an accident of this scale, there are many theories, including one that suggests this wasn't an accident at all. This episode is brought to you by Netflix.
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19:52 Speaker 00 Officially, the Titanic struck an iceberg just before midnight on April 14th, 1912. Two and a half hours later, it sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, 963 miles from its intended destination, New York. As with so many major tragedies, there is no shortage of people who claim they were "supposed to be there." But with the Titanic, it's actually true that several notable figures narrowly escaped death. For whatever reason, call it luck, fate, divine intervention, their plans change, they never board the ship, and their lives are spared.
20:33 Speaker 00 Milton S. Hershey, the chocolate magnate, pays a deposit for his first-class room on the Titanic, which he later cancels. Alfred Gwynn Vanderbilt has his ticket too, but is a last-minute no-show. Adding three more years to his life, in 1915, Vanderbilt would go down, ironically, with another massive, famous ship: the Lusitania. Then there's American financier and Wall Street tycoon John Pierpont Morgan. Reportedly, he's also set to sail on the Titanic in April 1912, but changes his mind. A lucky coincidence? Well, not everybody thinks so.
21:16 Speaker 00 See, JP Morgan wouldn't be just another first-class passenger. One of Morgan's companies controls the White Star Line, which owns the Titanic. Morgan actually has a special suite on the Ship of Dreams, dedicated especially to him. It's ready and waiting whenever he wants to hop on board, he has his own deck, his own specially-designed bathtub, and the room is styled to suit his personal taste, right down to the wood-paneled walls. In fact, some of Morgan's personal art collection is already loaded onto the ship. He's all set to return to New York, and then, just days before his trip, he changes his plans.
22:01 Speaker 00 And historians say, "We don't know for sure why he does this," while others say he doesn't board because he knows the ship will sink.
22:13 Speaker 00 Okay, uh, wait, let's step back a few years. Around the turn of the 20th century, the cruise ship industry is born. Prior to that, sea travel had been focused on one thing: efficiency. But a few visionaries see an opportunity. People want a better experience when they make that long trek across the Atlantic, and people with money want to travel in luxury. Why not make the ship part of the vacation? Setting sail on the open sea no longer means months of rigor and meager supplies. Even practical journeys between America and Europe could be done in style. A few years later, this new business model sparks a rivalry.
22:58 Speaker 00 In the early 1900s, two luxury ocean liner companies are locked in a battle: the Cunard Line versus the White Star Line. Cunard has the slight advantage. They're the first to add state-of-the-art wireless communication and electric lights to their ships. But right on their heels is the White Star Line, owned by Joseph Bruce Ismay. The company is both innovative and also quite lucrative for its shareholders. Competition between White Star and Cunard is fierce. Both companies try to lower ticket prices, but that means profit margins dwindle, making it difficult to thrive.
23:41 Speaker 00 It's around this time that J. P. Morgan takes notice. The investment banker and financial executive already heads a business conglomerate that dominates Wall Street. He can see the cruise line industry is worth its weight in gold. But in his view, the profits are being dispersed between too many companies. So, he does what he does best. He sets out to create a monopoly. He purchases a slew of smaller shipping companies until he owns a growing oceanic empire. Now, one thing is still missing, though: a prize jewel. He attempts to buy the largest of all the shipping companies: Cunard.
24:25 Speaker 00 But even J. P. Morgan can't always get what he wants. His proposal is rejected. That's when he shifts his attention to the White Star Line. Morgan's Trust, the International Mercantile Marine, or I M M, buys White Star for roughly $32 million in 1902, or more than $1.2 billion today. At the time of Morgan's death in 1913, he'll reportedly be worth about $80 million. That's about $2.7 billion today. He's rich, but he's by no means the richest man in America. In fact, when he dies, some of his friends are like, "What? Only worth $80 million?
25:10 Speaker 00 Oh, my God, how embarrassing. I thought you were, like, rich, rich." But to Morgan, money is not as important as power, which he has in abundance. According to an article by the Library of Congress, one wouldn't be totally wrong in thinking that J. P. Morgan was banking. He is a titan. And not just on Wall Street. In 1901, he takes control over U.S. Steel and grows it into the very first billion-dollar company. He also finances and oversees deals for the expanding railroad network. Above all else, Morgan likes to be the one in command,
25:53 Speaker 00 the one who other powerful people turn to. He even bails out the United States government. The panic of 1907 results in a run on the banks. Many of them are forced to close their doors. More are on the verge of bankruptcy, and the fate of the New York Stock Exchange hangs in the balance. To make a long story short, Morgan puts up his own money and talks his rich buddies into doing the same, ensuring the banks don't run out of cash and calming the fears of the American people. Afterward, Morgan wants to make sure an economic crash like that never happens again. After all, his businesses rely on a thriving economy.
26:36 Speaker 00 That takes us to November of 1910, when an elite group of six men meet in secret at an exclusive club hidden away on a remote island. Because, of course, these things are going to start with an elite group meeting in secret at an exclusive club hidden away on a remote island. Oh, what? Like, they're just gonna meet at a hotel conference room in Manhattan? Jekyll Island, of course, sits just off the coast of Georgia. At this time, it's owned by the members of the Jekyll Island Club. And this is not just any private organization.
27:17 Speaker 00 It's believed to be the most inaccessible club anywhere, populated by the richest members in the world, including, of course, J.P. Morgan. Morgan is not president at this meeting in 1910, but it's believed he's probably the one who sets everything up. The man ostensibly in charge on Jekyll Island is a Republican senator named Nelson Aldrich, who, by the way, has a toddler grandson named after him, future Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Aldrich goes to great lengths to keep this whole meeting under wraps.
27:58 Speaker 00 He invites the other attendees to a "duck hunting trip." Each man is instructed to arrive separately at a New Jersey train station, board Aldrich's private train car, and to only use first names throughout the week. They are like little boys playing a spy game, but the ruse works. Details about this meeting won't come out to the public for years, and not for lack of trying. Journalist B.C. Forbes, founder of Forbes Magazine, catches wind of the story a few years later and writes about it, twice. He thinks he's got the scoop and he's going to expose everyone, except his articles fly under the radar.
28:43 Speaker 00 People either don't notice, or they think he's making it all up. At the end of the Jekyll Island meeting, Aldrich and the others leave with a plan for what they call the National Reserve Association, an early iteration of the Federal Reserve. But the plan faces a lot of detractors. They say Aldrich's plan removes too much of the government's authority over its own economy. Unchecked, the Federal Reserve could favor private interests instead of the interest of the public. Furthermore, they worry it puts too much power into the hands of bankers. Honestly, Aldrich was probably expecting all of this criticism.
29:29 Speaker 00 It's a big reason why the island meeting was kept secret in the first place. He didn't want people to know the architects of the National Reserve Association. It could also explain why J. P. Morgan only watched them work from the sidelines. Remember, he is banking. If his name were all over the plan, it might scare people off. And he's very much in favor of this central bank idea. Which brings us back to the theory that Morgan supposedly knows the Titanic will sink. Theorists say that some of the loudest and most powerful opponents of the Federal Reserve
30:14 Speaker 00 are on board the Titanic when it sinks. Specifically, they name three influential men. American millionaire John Jacob Astor, mining magnate Benjamin Guggenheim, and Macy's co-owner Isidore Strauss. And remember, Morgan has a ticket and a room set aside for him on the maiden voyage. Some of his belongings reportedly have already been loaded into the cargo hold, and yet he changes his plans a few days before the ship sets sail. And it's not like today, you know, where a billionaire could jump on his private jet later that day.
30:56 Speaker 00 This is his ship, his special room, and the trip takes about a week. It's a pretty big deal to change plans. And if he does give an explanation, it gets lost to time. But Titanic historians offer two possible answers. In 2021, Don Lynch of the Titanic Historical Society tells Reuters that Morgan is too busy trying to export valuable artwork from France.
31:23 Speaker 00 Apparently, French authorities have had enough of rich Americans buying up their art and hoarding it, and now they're tightening their rules. Lynch says Morgan sees this moment as one final opportunity to add to his collection before that door closes behind him. So, instead of catching a ride on the Titanic, he's in Paris tying up loose ends. Another Titanic expert, Ray Lapine, says that could be true, but the official story he heard is that Morgan falls ill and wants to extend his stay in Aix-le-Ban, France. He vacations there every year, and it's easy to see why. The town is known as the Riviera of the Alps.
32:08 Speaker 00 It's a place where lush green mountains tower over and possibly blue waters, a place that's famous for its healing thermal spas, where the ultra wealthy, like Morgan, can relax from their, uh, well, I'm assuming rigorous daily lives. Morgan is about to turn 75 years old. If he really is sick, he might be thinking, "Why leave this calming, healing wonderland to board a ship?" Even if it is the nicest ship in the world, rough seas probably don't sound too appealing. Either that's, or he just wants to spend a few more days with his travel companion, who also happens to be his mistress.
32:52 Speaker 00 But some say, those are just cover stories. Because in 1913, the year after the Titanic sinks, the Federal Reserve Act is signed into law. In order to make that happen, the theory goes, maybe Morgan wields his power, something he clearly relishes, to make the Titanic go down and take his detractors with it. But if Morgan did target his rivals, then sinking the Titanic seems like a risky way to take them out. True, all three supposed enemies of the Federal Reserve, Aster, Strauss, and Guggenheim, do perish that night.
33:36 Speaker 00 According to survivors' reports, Aster ushers his wife into a lifeboat and may have passed up his own chance to board one. Strauss's story is similar. He refuses to board before women and children and gets left behind.
33:53 Speaker 00 As for Guggenheim, when it becomes clear the ship is sinking, he reportedly gives up his life vest, changes into his best suit, and spends his final hour drinking brandy and smoking a cigar. As the legend goes, he and his valet declare they want to, quote, "Go down like gentlemen." I'm not saying it would have been easy for these men to survive. Perhaps Morgan knows they would rather die than be thought of as cowardly, stealing a seat out from under a woman or child. By the way, that's exactly what happens to White Star managing director Bruce Ismay after he survives onboard a lifeboat.
34:35 Speaker 00 American papers go so far as to brand him, perhaps unfairly, "The coward of the Titanic." But if Morgan did just assume all three men would die, he made a lucky guess. First-class passengers had the highest survival rate of all the Titanic passengers, about 62%. They were closest to the lifeboats, farthest from the rising water, and historians say their safety was prioritized over those in second and third class. Nearly two out of three of the wealthiest people onboard lived to tell the tale. What really makes this Morgan-planned-it theory questionable, though,
35:20 Speaker 00 is the fact that there is no proof that Aster, Strauss, or Guggenheim were actually against the Federal Reserve. There's no evidence of how Aster or Guggenheim felt about the central bank at all. And Isidore Strauss went on record with The New York Times in 1911, stating his support for the idea. You can even find the article in the archives. Under the headline, "Isidore Strauss Urges New Banking Plan." Strauss agrees the country needs something like what the National Reserve Association is proposing.
35:58 Speaker 00 Quite frankly, even if all three men had been outspoken opponents, it's hard to see how their deaths would keep the Federal Reserve Act from passing. The initial ideas that came out of that secretive meeting on Jekyll Island went through multiple revisions before being signed into law. When it was first proposed by the Republican Senator Aldrich, he failed to gain bipartisan support. In 1912, Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the presidential election, and Democrats took control of the Senate and the House, both of which formed committees to scrutinize Aldrich's proposals and make changes.
36:39 Speaker 00 Point being, it's hard to understand how Astor, Strauss, and Guggenheim could have stopped that train in its tracks. And again, that's if they were truly against the Federal Reserve in the first place. It's even more difficult to imagine how one would orchestrate sinking the famously unsinkable ship using an iceberg. Granted, Morgan knows that the Titanic can only stay afloat if no more than four of its watertight compartments are compromised. As the ship's owner, he theoretically could have had influence over its design and more than enough money to pay an engineer for their silence.
37:20 Speaker 00 But there's never been any evidence to suggest striking the iceberg is anything but an accident. Not to mention, this theory assumes Morgan is willing to sacrifice 1,500 innocent lives to target three men in a situation he has little actual control over. It's also been suggested that the Titanic does not have the correct type of rockets onboard, and that's why nobody responds to their distress signal. And those who support the idea Morgan had something to do with making sure it sank point out the ship needed red flares. But all they had on board were white flares.
38:02 Speaker 00 Okay, well, the Titanic was indeed outfitted with thirty-six white flares, not red. That part is true. And red is the color that's generally required today if a ship is in trouble. However, the rules are a little different when the Titanic sinks. According to the 1912 International Rules of the Road, basically the Maritime Traffic Rulebook, signals do not necessarily have to be red as long as they make a loud sound. And there is one more stipulation. Signals of distress should be fired at one-minute intervals. On the Titanic, a total of eight rockets were fired over the course of an hour, and not at regular intervals either.
38:48 Speaker 00 Witnesses say there are long stretches of time in between. Any ships that might have been within earshot wouldn't be expected to understand this pattern as a distress signal. Now, there is one eerie part to this theory, and that is the existence of the novella Futility or the Wreck of the Titan. It's an 1898 story by Morgan Robertson, written and published years before the Titanic was built. Its main character is John Rowland, who receives an opportunity to work aboard the world's largest ship called the Titan. The fictional boat is supposed to be unsinkable.
39:33 Speaker 00 Then, while crossing the Atlantic, the Titan strikes an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. There aren't enough lifeboats on board, and few survive. By the way, all these parallels between the book and the actual disaster that happened less than fifteen years later are real, which has led to the insinuation that Morgan could have read the novella and used it as a playbook.
40:05 Speaker 00 But all of this seems to be ignoring one basic fact. Morgan is nothing if not a good businessman. And sinking the Titanic is not a good deal. For one thing, the maiden voyage should be one of the crowning achievements of his career and a huge boost for the White Star Line. For another, the Titanic would need to make several more trips before it could recoup the building cost. Ultimately, Morgan has more to lose than gain by sinking the Titanic. If he had wanted to kill those men, there were more cost-efficient ways of doing it.
40:45 Speaker 00 A tragedy like this, aside from the immeasurable human cost, is just bad business. However, there's another theory about why the White Star Line might have wanted the Titanic to sink. It has nothing to do with who is on board, and everything to do with making a profit. In the 1990s, over 80 years after the Titanic sank, author Robin Gardner publishes two books exploring his theory that the White Star Line intentionally sank its own ship in April of 1912.
41:26 Speaker 00 But that's not the Titanic that Bob Ballard found at the bottom of the ocean. It's a different ship that was passed off as the Titanic. First, we need to understand why the Titanic is built in the first place. Remember that rivalry I mentioned between the White Star Line and Cunard? Well, a few years after JP Morgan buys White Star, Cunard launches two amazing new ships, the Mauritania and the Lusitania. When they both begin operation in 1907, they are the biggest and fastest passenger superliners in the world. They're also the most expensive.
42:08 Speaker 00 If you listened to our recent episode on the Lusitania, you may already be aware of the luxuries offered on board. Excellent food, roomy cabins, there are even electric elevators. For its time, the Lusitania's level of opulence is mind-blowing.
42:28 Speaker 00 I have to assume JP Morgan isn't thrilled. The White Star line is being walloped by Cunard in pretty much every conceivable way. Bruce Ismay, the managing director of White Star, has to find a way to keep his boss Morgan happy and keep their company in the game. That same year, he works with White Star's dedicated shipbuilders to focus on the one area where they know they can outclass the Cunard line. Luxury. If they can't be faster, they might as well be more stylish and comfortable. The best staterooms on the ocean.
43:08 Speaker 00 Squash courts, Turkish baths, a gymnasium complete with a mechanical horse. Elegant woodwork, every detail thought out. And to provide world-class comfort, they'll build their ships bigger than the Lusitania and Mauritania too. The White Star line plans three new ocean liners. The first two, the Olympic and the Titanic, are to be built almost in tandem in Belfast, Ireland. Construction on the Olympic begins in December 1908. Once the hull is in place, work begins on the Titanic in March 1909. The sister ships are brought to life side by side.
43:52 Speaker 00 On paper, they are nearly identical in design, almost the same specs, similar layout, similar decor and machinery. They even have sequential yard numbers to identify their parts. The Olympic is branded with the number 400, while the Titanic is 401. As planned, the Olympic is finished and launched first in October 1910, and it's in service by late spring of 1911. But just a few months later, the Titanic's big sister is badly damaged. That September, the Olympic sets off on its fifth voyage across the Atlantic as it passes through the narrow channel between mainland Great Britain and the Isle of Wight.
44:36 Speaker 00 A Royal Navy ship, the HMS Hawk, sails toward it. Eventually, they turn and wind up moving parallel to each other. All of a sudden, the Olympic takes a turn wider than the Hawk expected, and the two ships collide. The Hawk is much smaller than the Olympic. Most ships are, remember, it's currently the largest ocean liner in operation. However, the Hawk, a protected cruiser that's been in use since 1891, has an inverted bow in front. It sticks out farthest under the water. That's so it can ram other ships and inflict damage.
45:16 Speaker 00 The result is a 40-foot tear along the Olympic's starboard side. As two of the Olympic's lower compartments take on water, its captain proceeds with an evacuation. By the way, that's Captain Edward J. Smith, as in the same guy who will later captain the Titanic and die in the process. Anyway, he suddenly realizes, hey, the Olympic isn't sinking. The watertight compartments have worked. The evacuation is halted, and the Olympic safely makes it to dry land, even with a gaping hole in its side. There is no loss of life, which will reinforce the idea that the White Star Line's ocean
46:00 Speaker 00 liners really are unsinkable. But while the Olympic doesn't sink, it's obviously damaged. Badly damaged. It returns to Belfast for repairs in October 1911, where construction on the Titanic is still underway. According to the official story, repairs take about six weeks, and the Olympic is back in operation that November. The Titanic's maiden voyage will ultimately be delayed in part because some of its builders have to divert their energy to fixing the Olympic. However, author Robin Gardner says that's not what actually happens.
46:43 Speaker 00 Once the Olympic makes it back to Belfast, he says, "The higher-ups at White Star realize the damage done by the Hawk is much worse than what was widely reported." Gardner partially bases this claim on how long the Olympic spent at port in Southampton right after the collision. The temporary repairs needed to sail on to Belfast, he argues, took a suspiciously long time. And that gives way to the theory that, once the Olympic does pull into port in Ireland, taking its old spot next door to the Titanic, a decision is made to switch the two ships. Why?
47:26 Speaker 00 Well, the Olympic is going to take too long to fix, and the extensive repairs are going to cost far more than anybody anticipated. Added to that, an investigation deems the Olympic at fault for the Hawk Incident, which means there will be no insurance money. And somewhere along the way, Gardner says, Bruce Ismay realizes it will be much faster to finish the Titanic and put her into service disguised as the Olympic, thus buying them a few more months to fix up the Olympic, which will now sail under the new name Titanic. It's a colossal switcheroo, and that's not all.
48:11 Speaker 00 The theory goes that White Star has given up on fully restoring the real Olympic. The cost isn't worth it. Instead, they can call it the Titanic, then sink the ship in a fake accident and take home a full insurance payout. Again, when the Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage in April 1912, Gardner is saying that's really the Olympic. Days later, it sinks because, he says, "it was always meant to sink, all in the name of making a buck." Gardner's theory has gained momentum on social media and Reddit in the past few years.
48:52 Speaker 00 Those who believe the Olympic and Titanic were switched say there's even photographic evidence. In particular, they point out the portholes. The theory goes like this: In its original designs, the Titanic has 14 portholes evenly spaced on the port side of sea deck, while photos show the Olympic has 16 portholes in the same spot, and they are unevenly spaced. But when the Titanic leaves Southampton on April 10, 1912, how many portholes does it have? Not 14, but 16, and they're unevenly spaced.
49:34 Speaker 00 Suddenly, the Titanic looks just like the Olympic, as if they'd been swapped.
49:43 Speaker 00 But historians say the porthole theory and the photos are easily debunked. Okay, back when the two ships were designed, they looked very similar on paper, right? Not identical, but close. Well, the Olympic is launched over five months before the Titanic. It also has a head start of nearly 10 months in operation, transporting passengers. All that time, the designers are learning lessons with the Olympic. They're taking note of what works and what doesn't, and making improvements to the Titanic while it's still under construction. For example, the Olympic has a large B-deck promenade.
50:25 Speaker 00 The designers believed passengers would enjoy strolling through and catching a glimpse of the sea. But in practice, the B-deck promenade doesn't get much use. So over on the Titanic, the same promenade gets scrapped. That space is redesigned and used for additional first-class cabins and a café. The Titanic then gets an enclosed promenade up on A-deck, which you can see in photos taken in April 1912 as the Titanic departs on its maiden voyage. Around the same time, the Olympic does not have the enclosure on the A-deck. So what's with the portholes?
51:08 Speaker 00 Well, it is true that the Titanic was designed to have 14, but in fact, so was the Olympic. Between the Titanic's launch in 1911 and its actual maiden voyage in 1912, two additional portholes are added above the crew galley. And the busy space gets boiling hot and the workers needed more air and light. The two new portholes provide some relief, even if they aren't perfectly spaced. Experts say Gardner's theory confuses the timelines of when the porthole photos were taken. Now, Gardner counters that during those six weeks in the fall of 1911, when the Olympic
51:49 Speaker 00 and the Titanic are swapping places, the builders change how their upper decks look too. The Olympic is given a B deck that resembles the Titanic's and vice versa. But, the fact is, the portholes and the decks were not the only noticeable differences between the two ships. At the time, the Titanic is still being finished. It has months to go before its maiden voyage. Installation of its engines and even its funnels hasn't been completed. Retrofitting the Olympic to look like the Titanic did in November 1911 would have taken more than six weeks, along with all the other repairs and finishing touches that had to be done.
52:33 Speaker 00 First, there's the fact that physically swapping the parts would have actually been a tremendous undertaking, carried out in a very short period of time. Since Bob Ballard discovered the Titanic wreckage, items have been brought to the surface. That includes dishware stamped with the Titanic logo, as well as parts of the ship which are all stamped 401, the Titanic's yard number. If it were really the Olympic at the bottom of the ocean floor, something emblazoned with its yard number 400 should have been recovered. There are other details, down to where the bells were located, that make it easy to differentiate between the Olympic and the Titanic, and which would have made swapping them a monumental task.
53:19 Speaker 00 Pulling it off would have required so much manpower that somebody would have talked, or if workers were paid for their silence, a passerby could have seen something that Titanic and Olympic were out in the open for all of Belfast to see. As naval designer Stephen Payne tells Ocean liner Designs, "The theory is, quote, 'complete nonsense and an absolute fallacy.'" If that evidence isn't enough, well, the insurance scam wouldn't even pay off. The Titanic reportedly costs $7.5 million to build. It's insured for a total loss, it's just $5 million.
54:03 Speaker 00 White Star would need an incredibly strong motive to sacrifice 1,500 lives and its own reputation, and losing 2.5 mil just doesn't make financial sense. When I was a kid, I remember thinking, "How did they not see the iceberg?", which I think leads to this whole sense of like, was there something more nefarious at play? But in recent years, a new theory about what happened that night has come forward. On the night the Titanic sank, air near the surface of the water was much colder than the air above it. That bends light in ways we aren't used to, creating a mirage. It's called super refraction, comes with a thermal inversion, and it makes the horizon
54:47 Speaker 00 appear higher than it really is, and everything below that looks like water. It's why we see an oasis mirage in the desert. Not only did it make it difficult to spot the iceberg until they were too close to avoid it, it also made the Titanic invisible to a ship that was nearby that could have saved more lives. The sinking of the Titanic is a deeply unsettling story. Filled with destruction and death, there are many heroes, but the darkness of human desperation is also very much on display. So I want to leave you with another lighter theory concerning the Titanic.
55:28 Speaker 00 It's August 8th, 1996, and filming is underway on James Cameron's Titanic. The cast and crew are in Nova Scotia, wrapping up the present day scenes starring Bill Paxton and Gloria Stuart. Film sets are already notorious for long hours. Added to that, this crew is filming outdoors at night. They don't get a lunch break until midnight, and that's when they tuck into a warm, comforting bowl of chowder. When it's time to get back to work, James Cameron suddenly feels horribly ill. He runs off to the bathroom and ends up, well, losing his chowder, as they say. And as he walks back onto the set, he says it's like he's found himself in the middle of a Twilight Zone episode.
56:13 Speaker 00 Everybody's gone! Well, turns out, they have not vanished into thin air, they've gotten sick too. Everyone who ate the chowder is experiencing intestinal distress. According to a police report, some 80 crew members will be sent to the hospital by the end of the night. The immediate assumption is, it's a case of food poisoning. But Cameron actually thinks the chowder could have been tainted by shellfish neurotoxin, you know, the kind we've mentioned was used in the CIA's heart attack gun? Because tummy troubles aren't the end of it. Cameron experiences other debilitating effects. He's so anxious, he can barely breathe.
56:56 Speaker 00 And, he can't stop laughing. Even when a crew member walks up and stabs the director in the face with a pen. Meanwhile, Bill Paxton, who also ate the tainted chowder, is busy taking part in a conga line around the set. If this is food poisoning, it is one of the most bizarre cases ever reported. So the local police conduct an investigation. They discover that the chowder hadn't gone bad. Somebody laced it with phencyclidine, otherwise known as PCP or angel dust, which can cause extreme hallucinations. Detectives never name a suspect, and the case is closed in 1999.
57:41 Speaker 00 Cameron has voiced his suspicion that a recently fired crew member did it, but then again, who knows? Gloria Stewart reportedly didn't eat lunch on set that night at all. She went to a restaurant. Either she's just that classy, or she needed an alibi. Just kidding, Gloria. The chowder story is true, and yet it's almost too wild to be believed, which fits in perfectly with the real story of the Titanic. The unsinkable ship brought down by an iceberg just five days into its maiden voyage.
58:23 Speaker 00 Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories Rewind. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Our sources for today's episode include National Geographic's documentary, Titanic: The Digital Resurrection, Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank by Robin Gardner, Britannica, and Titanic Conspiracy: The Full Truth by Ocean liner Designs. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth.
59:06 Speaker 00 This episode was written and researched by Mickey Taylor and Jenna Lennon, edited by Justin Sales, fact-checked by Sophie Kemp, and engineered, video edited, and sound designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.
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