Was a fire-damaged ship, the Olympic, disguised as the Titanic so it could be intentionally sunk to commit "the greatest insurance fraud in history"? No, that's not true: The baseless Titanic-switch conspiracy is proven false on multiple fronts. The Olympic was in service the night the Titanic sank, and continued to be used as a passenger ship and a troop transport ship in WWI until it was retired and scrapped in 1935. Olympic's parts bore the Harland & Wolff shipyard number 400. The Titanic, built in the adjacent berth in the shipyard, was assigned number 401 -- a number that has been documented, still visible, on one of the ship's giant propellers at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, where it sank in 1912.
This variation of the disproven Titanic switch conspiracy appeared in a post (archived here) published on Threads on June 16, 2024. The post was captioned:
The Titanic never sank. That is a lie. The actual Titanic was stripped for parts and sold off. The Olympic is what sank...a ship that was disguised as the Titanic because it was an identical sister ship. All I have to say is there was a fire on board a week before it was due to set sail so the structure was damaged at the bottom of the ship. The letters TITANIC were painted over the letters OLYMPIC. And Britain got away with the greatest insurance fraud in history.
(Image source: Threads screenshot taken on Tue Jun 25 17:33:06 2024 UTC)
This post contains a unique variation of a conspiracy theory originally introduced in a 1996 book entitled, "The Titanic Conspiracy: Cover-Ups and Mysteries of the World's Most Famous Sea Disaster:" that the Titanic and Olympic had been switched to permit filing of a fraudulent insurance claim.
In this version posted on Threads, a purported fire on board the Olympic caused structural damage a week before the Titanic was due to set sail. This narrative does not hold up. The historical record clearly establishes that both ships were filled with passengers and crew and were underway on the night the Titanic sank. In addition to the false claim, the post errs on ownership of the ships: both belonged to the White Star Line, not "Britain" as suggested in the post.
(Image source: Library of Congress screenshot taken on Tue Jun 25 21:34:57 2024 UTC)
The Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, on Wednesday April 10, 1912. That same day, the Olympic arrived in New York City (pictured above) having left Southampton a week earlier on April 3, 1912. The ships were on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean at the time when this post claims the Olympic had a fire on board and was then disguised as the Titanic. After a few days layover in New York Harbor, the Olympic set sail on the return trip to Southampton on Saturday as reported in the Sunday, April 14, 1912, New York Times.
Overnight, April 14 -15, 1912, the Titanic sank. The following Sunday, April 21, 1912, the New York Times reported that the Olympic's captain, Herbert James Haddock, had on April 20, 1912, upon arriving in Plymouth, England, denied a rumor about his handling of relayed wireless (radio) reports.
Haddock further clarified the Olympic was 500 miles from the Titanic when the call for aid reached his ship via the steamer Celtic. The Olympic responded "utilizing every pound of steam" at a pace of 24 and 25 knots an hour for about 400 miles. But before reaching the site where the Titanic's distress call had gone out, the Olympic received word from another ship, the Carpathia, that all survivors were aboard and the Titanic had disappeared.
(Image source: Olympic and Titanic under construction at the Harland & Wolff shipyard Belfast, Ireland. Library of Congress screenshot taken on Tue Jun 25 21:34:57 2024 UTC)
The ship swap theory
This conspiracy theory was concocted by Robin Gardiner and presented in a book, "The Titanic Conspiracy: Cover-Ups and Mysteries of the World's Most Famous Sea Disaster" published in 1996. The book's co-author, Dan van der Vat, was a naval historian. Gardiner went on to write several more books on this theme without van der Vat as a co-author. In his biography van der Vat explains how he became involved, and that Gardiner's theory had not stood up to his scrutiny.
My co-author, Robin Gardiner, had written a manuscript about his conspiracy theory (the ship had been switched with her sister!), but it needed work. His literary agent had once been mine, so she sent it to me. My role was to go back to the original sources and check them out for clues, and then to write the book, with line-by-line consultation with Robin. The publishers were disillusioned when the theory did not stand up but, thanks to the magnificent support of the late Dame Beryl Bainbridge and others, it became a bestseller in several countries (Japan, Germany, Italy) as well as Britain. The whole affair was great fun and, for once, decently rewarded.
The Olympic's damaged and repaired hull
(Image source: Lead Stories composite image with screenshots from greatships.net taken on Tue Jun 25 22:46:13 2024 UTC)
The Olympic did suffer damage to its hull in a collision with a Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke on September 20, 1911, while maneuvering near Southampton, England. The bow of the Hawke (pictured above right) tore the Olympic's hull above and below the waterline (above left) but the Olympic was able to return to Southampton where it was patched enough to return to Belfast for permanent repairs, which were completed by November 1911, and the Olympic returned to service.
New scans of the Titanic wreck show part numbers are '401'
On May 17, 2023, the BBC reported on a full-sized digital scan that had been done of the Titanic wreck site on the ocean floor using a method called deep-sea mapping. A partnership between Atlantic Productions and the deep-sea mapping company Magellan took more than 700,000 scans, which were then spliced together to create a 3D reconstruction of the shipwreck visualized in a way that was not possible before. One image included in the BBC article shows one of the propellers with the number 401, which had been assigned to the Titanic at the shipyard to distinguish its parts with those of Olympic, which was 400.
(Image source: BBC.com screenshot taken on Tue Jun 25 23:25:18 2024 UTC)
Other fact check agencies have also reviewed this claim, including AP and Reuters.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving the Titanic shipwreck can be found here.
