• HBK@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 months ago

    Apparently there is a Wikipedia page dedicated to Titanic Conspiracy theories, who knew!

    In regards to swapping the Olympic with the Titanic, this section summarizes:

    British historian Gareth Russell, for his part, calls the theory “so painfully ridiculous that one can only lament the thousands of trees which lost their lives to provide the paper on which it has been articulated.” He notes that, “since the sister ships had significant interior architectural and design differences, switching them secretly in a week would be nearly impossible from a practical standpoint. A switch would also not be economically worthwhile, since the ship’s owners could have simply damaged the ship while docked (for instance, by setting a fire) and collected the insurance money from that ‘accident’, which would have been far less severe, and infinitely less stupid, than sailing her out into the middle of the Atlantic with thousands of people, and their luggage, on board, and ramming her into an iceberg”.

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      But like…why the fuck would it even matter? The story is exactly the same, the only different thing is the name of the ship. And if their theory is that they only sunk it for insurance money…like, what were the people in charge of sailing the thing into an iceberg getting out of this except death? What a dumb thing to spend your time being up in arms over.

      • stom@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        I believe the “plan” was to sink her slowly by letting some water in, then have the “safest” at sea disaster by calling for help with enough time for nearby vessels to assist. The theory then goes on to claim that hitting the iceberg was an accident that only happened because they couldn’t steer around it fast enough due to the water they had already taken on.

        Can’t remember where I read this it, might have been the Wikipedia article about the conspiracy theory.