With all the fuss marking the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, many readers will be surprised to learn that – in an effort to sell more copies of his book – Oxford author Robin Gardiner claims that it was not the Titanic that sank, but her sister ship, the Olympic.
In a story which could have come straight from the pages of infowars or DavidIcke.com, Gardiner – a plasterer and father-of-one from Barton – cites commerical wrongdoings, insurance fraud, gold smuggling, aliens living amongst us and government collusion* leading to White Star (this White Star, not this White Star) switching the identities of the Olympic and the Titanic:
This was collusion, conspiracy and cover-up on an unprecedented scale.
The evidence is overwhelming; eyewitnesses themselves describe running along Titanic’s decks, but where they said there were promenades, there should have been cabins.
And while survivors on B Deck described seeing lifeboats being lowered from above, there’s no way they would have seen that on Titanic – only on the ship Olympic.You only have to look at the ships’ specifications to see the Titanic passengers were actually aboard Olympic.
I can imagine that in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, in the early hours of 15th April 1912, with the realisation that the ship you were on was sinking, and over 2000 passengers and crew desperately trying to get into lifeboats in the dark that promenades and cabins could be easily confused, as could lifeboats being lowered from ab… OH MY GOD HERE COMES THE WATER, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!1!!!
I guess what I’m saying is that I’m questioning his sources a bit.
The best bit for me is where Gardiner claims that the Titanic (presumably thinly disguised as the Olympic) sailed around the world quite happily for another 25 years before (conveniently) being send to the breaker’s yard in 1937, thus handily destroying any evidence of White Star’s naughtiness a whole 75 years before Mr Gardiner broke the story.
* I may have made a bit of this up.
I imagine James Cameron would beg to differ with this Gardiner bloke.
ciro > Only briefly. Barton is (one of many) rough bits of Oxford. And he’s a plasterer.
He’d probably knock Cameron clean out in a Friday night fist fight outside The Fox for disputing his conspiracy theory. Maybe, anyway.
Does it really matter whether it was Titanic, Brittanic or Olympic that sank?
Well, actually, they all did to some extent during the course of their lives, (Brittanic is, I think, lying off Gibraltar?) so perhaps there’s more merit to whether or not White Star Lines was involved in some conspiracy to promote air travel?