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This is a trustworthy article that disproves the switch of the Titanic and the Olympic

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Social media posts reviving a long-running conspiracy theory - that the Titanic ocean liner wreck on the floor of the North Atlantic is really its sister ship Olympic - are missing the context that documented differences between the two ships, such as part numbers etched into surviving artifacts, offer powerful evidence that the switch never occurred.

The theory that Olympic was switched with Titanic before the latter's maiden voyage on April 10, 1912, then deliberately sunk five days later to collect an insurance payout, resurfaced online amid news coverage of the search for Titan, a private submersible with five passengers that imploded on a dive to view the Titanic on June 18, 2023 ( here).

Examples of posts claiming Titanic and Olympic were swapped to commit insurance fraud can be seen on Facebook ( here) and ( here).

The posts share a photo said to be Titanic, described in a caption as depicting the ship at a scrap yard in 1935. However, the colorized image shared online shows Titanic during its outfitting process and was taken in September 1911, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, by photographer Robert John Welch, according to National Museums Northern Ireland, which owns the copyright to the original black-and-white photo ( here).

Beyond the miscaptioned image shared online, historians say that many details of the conspiracy theory don't hold water. In particular, design differences between the Titanic and Olympic, visible in photographs of the two ships, are consistent with the wreckage of Titanic being, in fact, Titanic, and making the switch theory implausible.

Ship-specific identifying numbers etched into surviving pieces of the two ships also attest that the switch never happened, according to J. Kent Layton, a maritime researcher and author of multiple books on Titanic ( here).

"This conspiracy theory is one of the most thoroughly disproven conspiracies about Titanic, and yet it remains one of the most popular and most quickly spread," Layton said in an email.

The ill-fated Titanic, one of three sister ships constructed by White Star Lines in 1909-1912 ( here), set out on its maiden voyage on April 10, 1912, and sank on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg while traveling from Southampton, England, to New York, taking more than 1,500 lives ( here), ( here).

Another of the ships, Olympic, was put into service the year before, on June 14, 1911, and retired in 1935, with many of its fixtures and fittings auctioned off before it was scrapped. Even before Titanic first set sail, though, Olympic had already experienced its own serious accident in a collision with another ship in September 1911, and was sent for costly repairs to the Belfast shipyard where Titanic was still under construction ( here), ( here), ( here).

Photos of a hole in the hull of Olympic following the 1911 collision can be seen on Getty Images ( here), ( here).

That is when the switch could have occurred, according to the conspiracy theory, which rests on the idea that Olympic's repairs were so expensive, the ships' owners decided to switch it with Titanic, then to deliberately sink the damaged ship and collect on the insurance claim. More on the theory can be read ( here), ( here) and ( here).

The problem with the theory, historians have shown, is that the two ships were not identical and their distinguishing differences are consistent with each ship having remained under its original name.

Olympic, for example, was photographed docked in New York on the day Titanic set sail from Southampton, as seen in a photo held by the Library of Congress, dated April 10, 1912, and credited to the Bain News Service ( here). The photo shows part of the open A deck promenade, which is consistent with prior pictures of Olympic, and an area whose design was different on Titanic.

In another photo credited to the Bain News Service and dated June 21, 1911, Olympic's open A deck is also clearly visible ( here), Layton noted in an email. In contrast, the forward half of the A deck on Titanic was enclosed by windows, visible in a 1912 stock photo on Getty Images ( here).

"This was a feature never seen on Olympic at any point in her career," Layton said.

The enclosed Titanic A deck is also visible in a 3D digital scan of the wreck produced by deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd as part of a documentary project ( www.magellan.gg/titanic-in-3d/), ( here). Magellan and its collaborator Atlantic Productions released sample images and animations of the Titanic wreck site scans to media outlets in May 2023, which can be viewed ( here), ( here).

The B decks of the two ships were also different, Layton said, explaining that "the original side plating of Titanic's B Deck was removed in order to accommodate a new layout for B Deck that was never duplicated aboard Olympic." Instead, Olympic had an enclosed promenade for first class passengers on the B deck, while the same space on Titanic featured new suites for first class accommodations.

The open B deck design seen in the 1912 Titanic photo on Getty Images ( here) and in the 3D digital scan of the shipwreck ( here) match, whereas the enclosed promenade on Olympic's B deck differs from that of the shipwreck ( here).

"Through the B Deck windows, Olympic's actual First Class enclosed Promenades (are seen) where Titanic's suites were," Layton said.

A propeller on the seafloor etched with the number 401 is evidence of another important difference between the two ships. Throughout each ship, various parts carried the "hull number" of that ship, and they could not all have been swapped before Titanic sailed, historians say.

Olympic's hull number was 400, and Titanic's was 401.

The hull number 400 can be seen in surviving parts of Olympic, such as an oak panel auctioned in 2019 ( here), as well as a wood section auctioned in 2023 ( here).

"Meanwhile," Layton said, "the Titanic's correct hull number, 401, has been observed at the wreck site and on items recovered from the wreck. There can be no doubt that the wreck on the seafloor is RMS Titanic."

Some photos of parts found or recovered from the Titanic wreckage and bearing the hull number 401 can be seen on a website dedicated to debunking the switch theory ( here). They include a wooden cabinet found floating at the scene after Titanic sank, and a gear shaft and tools recovered from the wreckage.

To conspiracy theorists who argue that even the propellers of the two ships were switched, Tim Maltin, an author of multiple books and films on Titanic ( timmaltin.com/), points out that Titanic's hull number 401 "is stamped on her propeller on the seabed."

Titanic's starboard propeller on the ocean floor, marked with the number 401, is clearly visible (see second and third images in slideshow) in the 3D digital scans of the wreckage ( here).

Missing context. Maritime researchers point to documented differences in the design and hull numbers of Titanic and Olympic that do not support a theory that the wreck of Titanic is its sister ship Olympic.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts .

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Revived Titanic-Olympic 'switch' conspiracy sunk by ships' differences

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that the Titanic ocean liner wreck on the floor of the North Atlantic is really its sister ship Olympic - are missing the context that documented differences between the two ships, such as part numbers etched into surviving artifacts, offer powerful evidence that the switch never occurred.

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An article that speaks on the multiple theories surrounding the Titanic

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Pivotal events have a way of attracting harmful myths and conspiracy theories. This goes for great achievements like the moon landing (which Buzz Aldrin punched a guy for denying) as well as great tragedies like Martin Luther King Jr. 's assassination, the 9/11 attacks and the disaster.

Late in the evening on April 14, 1912, the R.M.S. Titanic hit an iceberg and sank into the icy waters of the North Atlantic, killing 1,517 of the 2,223 passengers and crew members aboard. To make sense of this tragic and seemingly random disaster, people over the past century have told stories of ominous signs of bad luck that were supposedly ignored beforehand, or spun elaborate conspiracy theories to explain the "real" reason it sank.

Here, we explain the most enduring conspiracy theories and myths about the tragedy.

J.P. Morgan planned the disaster to kill his rivals.

According to this theory, millionaire banker J.P. Morgan planned the Titanic disaster to kill off rival millionaires Jacob Astor, Isidor Straus and Benjamin Guggenheim, who all perished aboard.

The theory hinges on the fact that Morgan had originally planned to sail on the Titanic but changed his mind shortly before it took off. Yet it doesn't offer any explanation for how he caused the ship to hit an iceberg and kill over 1,500 people, let alone the three men he supposedly intended to die. To top it off, the theory claims Morgan wanted to kill them because they opposed the creation of the Federal Reserve, even though Astor and Guggenheim don't appear to have taken a position on it and Straus actually supported it.

Alternative versions of this theory claim the Rothschild banking family or the Jesuits were the ones who arranged Astor, Straus and Guggenheim's deaths on the Titanic. As The Washington Post notes, invoking the Rothchilds as international conspirators is "a centuries-old anti-Semitic trope... The Rothschild family founded banking houses across Europe in the early 1800s, and they have been a favorite target of conspiracy theorists ever since."

This theory resurfaced recently in connection with QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory detailing a supposed secret plot by an alleged "deep state" against U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters.

The Titanic never sank.

People seem to love a good insurance fraud story, so maybe it's unsurprising that this conspiracy theory is one of the Titanic's most popular. This one posits that someone switched the Titanic with another White Star Line ship, the R.M.S. Olympic. But as Paul Burns, vice president and curator for the Titanic Museum Attractions in Missouri and Tennessee, points out, "it just doesn't make any sense."

This theory starts with the fact that the Olympic was damaged while sailing from Southampton, England to New York in September 1911, and had to return to Harland and Wolff's shipping yard in Belfast for repairs. The company repaired the Olympic and it sailed to New York and back. It returned to Belfast for more repairs in March 1912, a few weeks before the Titanic set sail.

The conspiracy theory claims that some person or people found the Olympic too severely damaged to be profitable, and so at some point switched it with the Titanic to purposefully ditch the damaged ship, reap the insurance money and, it seems, kill a bunch of people in the process.

There are a lot of holes in this theory, but one of the biggest is that the Titanic's insurance wasn't enough to cover the Olympic's loss. As J. Kent Layton writes in Conspiracies at Sea, "the switch conspiracy founders-quite literally-on its financial merits alone."

A mummy's curse doomed the Titanic.

One of the passengers who went down with the Titanic was William Stead, a British editor who subscribed to early 20th-century spiritualism and had spent the past several years claiming a cursed mummy was causing mysterious destruction and disaster in London. As with other myths about "Egyptian curses" and "Native American burial grounds," this myth played off of colonialists' anxiety about the people whose land they had plundered.

On board the Titanic, Stead happily repeated his tale of the mummy's curse to other passengers. After the ship sank, a survivor recounted Stead's story to the New York World, and the media picked it up. The next month, The Washington Post ran this headline: "Ghost of the Titanic: Vengeance of Hoodoo Mummy Followed Man Who Wrote Its History."

Burns says some people linked the "mummy's curse" to Egyptian artifacts that survivor (and hero) Margaret Brown really did take with her on the Titanic to deliver to a museum in Denver. In other versions of the story, the mummy was actually aboard the Titanic because the British Museum had sold it to an American who was shipping it home, Snopes reports.

But the truth is the so-called "unlucky mummy" is still at the British Museum, and no mummy was ever loaded onto the ship. It was an iceberg, not a curse, that sank the Titanic.

The ship's number read 'NO POPE' backwards.

One myth posits that Catholic employees of Harland and Wolff, the Belfast company that built the Titanic, were distressed that the ship's number, 3909 04, seemed to say "NO POPE" when viewed in a mirror. Was this a sign of bad luck that foretold the ship's doom?

Nope. The late Titanic historian Walter Lord wrote that he received letters from people in Ireland relaying this "NO POPE" story beginning in the mid-1950s. Yet as Burns pointed out in his 1986 book, The Night Lives On, there was no such number attached to the Titanic.

The hull number painted on the ship was 401, the same as its yard number at Harland and Wolff, and its Board of Trade number was 131,428. Yet even if one of its numbers had read "NO POPE," there weren't any Catholic workers at Harland and Wolff for it to upset. The company had driven its Catholic employees away in the late 1800s, and "by the twentieth century, Harland and Wolff had a reputation for only employing Protestants," writes Annie Caulfield in Irish Blood, English Heart, Ulster Fry.

Despite this reality, Paul Burns, of the Titanic Museum Attractions in Missouri and Tennessee, says that visitors still occasionally ask about this myth.

Jack Dawson is Jay Gatsby.

OK, this one is actually about the 1997 Titanic movie-and it's a fan theory-but still. There is a theory on the internet that Leonardo DiCaprio'scharacter in Titanic and his character in The Great Gatsby are the same person.

"[T]he movie is obviously an alternate timeline where he survived the sinking of the ship and went on to build a life for himself in America in an attempt to reunite with Rose," writes Chris Lough on Tor.com, a science fiction and fantasy site. "He survives, builds himself into a party-going showman in the Jazz Age in hopes that Rose will one day appear, but ends up finding love with another woman, Daisy."

Because this one is about fictional characters in film, it isn't something we can prove or disprove. We'll leave it up to you to decide if Jack really is the Great Gatsby.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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The Craziest Titanic Conspiracy Theories, Explained | HISTORY

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Did a mummy's curse cause the Titanic to sink?

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Article that debunks the theory of the TItanic and Olympic switching

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A video circulating on social media is promoting a conspiracy theory surrounding the sinking of the Titanic. According to the theory, the Titanic ship never sunk and it was actually the HMS Olympic, one of the Titanic's sister ships, that was deliberately sunk. The theory suggests that the Olympic, which had been damaged in an accident, was returned to the manufacturer for repairs while the Titanic was under construction. To recoup the losses from the accident and claim the insurance, the company allegedly switched the names of the two ships, and the Titanic was then deliberately sunk, resulting in the loss of over 1500 lives. The video claims that the source of these claims was Robin Gardner. Let's check the veracity of these claims.

Claim: The Titanic ship was switched with the HMS Olympic and deliberately sunk as part of an insurance fraud scheme.

Fact: There is no evidence to support this conspiracy theory. The theory was propagated by British author Robin Gardiner, but it was debunked by many authors and experts, including Steve Hall and Bruce Beveridge. The differences between the Titanic and the Olympic were more than just cosmetic and included many structural differences that would have made it impossible to switch the two ships. The insurance fraud theory also does not hold up to scrutiny. Several documentary films have presented expert evidence to debunk the conspiracy theories surrounding the Titanic disaster. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.

Initially, we found that British author Robin Gardiner played a key role in propagating the claims around the Titanic conspiracy theories. In his various books, he suggested that the Titanic did not actually sink but was switched with its damaged sister ship, the Olympic, and then deliberately sunk for insurance money. According to Gardiner's theory, the White Star Line, which owned both ships, wanted to avoid paying for the expensive repairs on the Olympic, and so swapped it with the Titanic, which had only just been completed. Gardiner claimed that the damage to the Olympic was so severe that it was irreparable, and that the Titanic was modified to make it look like the Olympic. The Titanic was then sent on its maiden voyage and deliberately sunk, with the intention of collecting the insurance money.

However, these claims were debunked by many authors and experts. Steve Hall and Bruce Beveridge co-authored a book titled " Olympic & Titanic: The Truth Behind the Conspiracy." In the book, they extensively researched the claims made by conspiracy theorists and presented a wealth of evidence to refute them.

They pointed out that the differences between the Titanic and the Olympic were more than just cosmetic and included many structural differences that would have made it impossible to switch the two ships. For example, the Titanic was longer and had a different number of watertight compartments than the Olympic. Additionally, the Titanic had more powerful engines than the Olympic and had a different configuration of its propeller shafts. Hall and Beveridge also provided evidence from contemporary sources such as newspapers and shipbuilding journals to show that the Titanic was indeed the ship that sank in 1912. They presented eyewitness accounts from survivors of the sinking who identified the ship as the Titanic, and they pointed out that the ship's builders, Harland and Wolff, publicly confirmed that the Titanic was lost.

Furthermore, Hall and Beveridge pointed out that the insurance fraud theory does not hold up to scrutiny. The Titanic was insured for $5 million, while its actual construction co s t was $7.5 million. Therefore, even if the White Star Line had intentionally sunk the ship, they would still have suffered a financial loss. Similarly, several documentary films have presented expert evidence to debunk the conspiracy theories surrounding the Titanic disaster. Some of them can be seen here and here.

To sum it up, the evidence gathered from various sources including historical documents, shipbuilding records, and testimonies from experts, researchers, and historians strongly suggests that there is no basis to support the claims that the Titanic was switched with the Olympic and intentionally sunk for insurance fraud. Therefore, the theory remains a baseless and unfounded conspiracy.

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No Evidence to Support This Conspiracy Theory: Titanic Was Switched with Olympic - FACTLY

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A video circulating on social media is promoting a conspiracy theory surrounding the sinking of the Titanic. According to the theory, the Titanic ship never sunk and it was actually the HMS Olympic, one of the Titanic's sister ships, that was deliberately sunk.

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An article that disproves the swap of the Titanic and Olympic

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Claims the Titanic was secretly switched with a sister ship are unfounded

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More than 110 years after the ill-fated luxury steamship sank off Newfoundland after hitting an iceberg, killing about 1,500 people on its maiden voyage, social media users are resurrecting decades-old conspiracy theories to suggest the two ships were switched.

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Article with 5 different conspiracy theories one of which includes the theory of the Olympic sinking

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The Titanic was marked by a controversial secret message

One conspiracy theory about the Titanic has been floating around for years.

First, it's important to note that the Titanic was constructed in the city of Belfast by the shipbuilding firm Harland and Wolff.

The conspiracy theory is that Catholic workers reacted in horror when the new ship's hull number - 3909 04 - was unveiled.

The reason? If you flip 3909 04 upside down, it kind of looks like "NO POPE." As far as the theory goes, the Catholic workers saw this as blasphemy, and worried that harm would come to the ship.

But there are a number of big problems with this conspiracy theory, which Snopes has also debunked.

To start, Harland and Wollff assigned the Titanic a yard number of 401. The 3909 04 number is completely made up.

What's more, there would have been no Catholic workers on hand to warn their Protestant colleagues of the problematic hull number.

In 1886, Protestant Harland and Wolff employees launched a large-scale attack on their Catholic coworkers, according to the book " The Invention of the White Race." The result was an exodus of Catholic workers from the shipbuilder, which was Belfast's largest employer at the time.

In " Irish Blood, English Heart, Ulster Fry: Return Journeys to Ireland," Annie Caulfield writes that, "by the twentieth century, Harland and Wolff had a reputation for only employing Protestants."

The Titanic was doomed due to a mummy's curse

Did an ancient mummy seal the Titanic's fate?

No. Human error and a lifeboat shortage brought about the maritime catastrophe.

Still, the idea that an ancient curse sunk the ship is one of the more fanciful conspiracy theories that cropped up in the wake of the disaster.

According to the legend, an ancient, mummified princess left a trail of death and devastation across England in the early 1900s after being excavated and removed from Egypt.

Once the beleaguered community of British art collectors and museum professionals had enough of the haunted mummy, an American archaeologist swooped in to purchase it. Ignoring his colleagues' warnings, he headed back to New York with his new acquisition.

But the unfortunate scholar and the mummy never made to the States. Because, lo and behold, the name of the ship that they sailed off on was the HMS Titanic!

The tale is popular, but also completely fictional. Snopes debunked the story, noting that, even disregarding the tale's fantastical elements, there was no mummy onboard the ship.

That hasn't stopped the British Museum's so-called " unlucky mummy" from getting blamed for the ship's sinking, though.

The ship was attacked by a U-boat

The Titanic is known as one of the biggest peacetime maritime disasters in history. The tragedy missed the onset of the First World War by two years.

But some still speculate that a German U-boat was really behind the ship's sinking.

If such a theory panned out, that'd make the Titanic's sinking a precursor to that of the Lusitania. In 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the British ocean liner off the coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 people.

While the theory lacks an abundance of evidence, it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

A number of Titanic survivors reported to have noticed "an unidentified vessel approximately five to six miles away" from the sinking ship, which reportedly lingered until 2 a.m., according to Dr. Franklin Ruehl's piece in The Huffington Post. Ruehl speculated that the craft was possibly "a submarine that had surfaced to assess the damage it had caused, after which time it skulked off," and also cited survivor testimony about a number of explosions that seemed to go off deep with the ship.

"The sub may have deliberately targeted the luxury liner or possibly accidentally collided with it," Ruehl wrote.

The Titanic never sank

What if the Titanic never sank at all?

That's the thinking behind one particular conspiracy theory. According to this idea, the Olympic - the Titanic's older, nearly identical sister ship - was actually the one that went down near Newfoundland.

But what would've been the point of switching the ships in secret?

In the book " Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank?" researcher Robin Gardiner wrote that the whole disaster was the result of an insurance scam by the International Mercantile Marine Co., which owned the White Star Line. The Olympic and the Titanic were both White Star Line vessels.

According to Gardiner's theory, the trouble started when the Olympic crashed into a warship in 1911, and was blamed for the accident in an ensuing inquiry. As a result, the White Star Line - an IMM subsidiary - was unable to receive an insurance payout.

Gardiner theorized that the line fixed up the Olympic as best as it could, and masqueraded it as the Titanic. By allowing the wounded ship to continue on under an assumed name, the company could collect the insurance payment when it sunk.

The alleged intent wasn't to kill anyone onboard - if the plan had gone off without a hitch, the ship would have sunk slowly and close to another ship that could subsequently rescue the crew and passengers. So what went wrong? According to Gardiner, the liner ended up accidentally running over a darkened rescue ship, which passengers and crew members would later mistake for an iceberg.

The blog Ultimate Titanic reported that, despite Gardiner's theory, all numbered items pulled from the wreck of the Titanic bore the construction number 401. The Olympic's construction number, on the other hand, was 400.

What's more, " Conspiracies at Sea: Titanic and Lusitania" author J. Kent Layton wrote that, before the Olympic was broken up for scrap, its woodwork was sold. ""Never, not once, as a single piece of woodwork from the Olympic turned up with the number '401' stamped on the reverse," Layton wrote.

JP Morgan was behind the whole thing

This rumor has everything you could want in a conspiracy theory. A man powerful and wealthy enough to play god. Overly-complicated methods of assassination. A mass casualty event. The Federal Reserve Bank.

There's a theory out there that JP Morgan sank the Titanic in order to pave the way for the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank in the US. The bank's creation was reportedly opposed by millionaire John Jacob Astor, mining magnate Benjamin Guggenheim, and Macy's co-owner Isidor Straus.

These three wealthy men did indeed lose their lives when the Titanic sank.

Astor was last seen clinging to the side of a raft. Guggenheim, whose body was never recovered, reportedly put a rose in his buttonhole and quipped, "We've dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen." And Straus died alongside his wife Ida, who refused to leave her husband's side as the ship sank.

But Morgan dodged death and disaster when he canceled his trip in the eleventh hour. The powerful financier owned the IMM, which in turn owned the White Star Line. As such, he had his own personal suite, promenade deck, and specially-designed bath on the ship.

Morgan was reportedly supposed to be on the ship, but decided to skip the maiden voyage at the last second. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that he decided to linger in Europe in order to buy tapestries for his art collection.

So what reason would Morgan have to allegedly sink his own ship? Conspiracy theorists say that, in the interest of clearing away opposition to the Federal Reserve Bank, Morgan somehow manipulated all of his rivals into sail on the maiden voyage, so that he could sink it.

But, Layton pointed out that it's almost unimaginable that Morgan could've gotten all three of his major rivals to take the fateful trip.

"Surely there had to be easier ways to carry out the plan?" Layton wrote. "Even more importantly: how was it that no one came forward in the century since and said, 'Yes, I helped to set up the sinking of the Titanic in order to kill three men who were opposed to the formation of the US Federal Reserve'?"

More: Features Titanic Conspiracies Conspiracy Theories

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5 wild conspiracy theories surrounding the sinking of the Titanic

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The Titanic was marked by a controversial secret message One conspiracy theory about the Titanic has been floating around for years. First, it's important to note that the Titanic was constructed in the city of Belfast by the shipbuilding firm Harland and Wolff.

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This is a trustworthy article that fact check the theory of JP Morgan sinking the Titanic to push the US Federal Reserve

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A widely-shared meme has taken several facts about the Titanic out of context to make unsubstantiated claims that imply the ship's sinking was a deliberate act. This is not true - experts widely agree the sinking of the Titanic was an accident.

The meme was posted to Facebook on March 1 and has been shared more than 600 times ( here). It consists of two images: one of the ship and a second of American financier John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan ( here). These sit alongside a wall of text that suggests Morgan had motive to sink the Titanic because it was hosting three powerful people who opposed his idea for a centralised banking system, ie: the U.S. Federal Reserve.

"DID YOU KNOW? The man who funded the building of the titanic, J. P. Morgan, cancelled his long-awaited journey just hours before its proposed departure," the meme reads. "3 of the wealthiest men on earth, whom (sic) were against the creation of the federal reserve bank, happened to be invited aboard for its maiden voyage (John Aster, Isador Strauss & Benjamin Guggenheim).

"It then headed full speed into a known iceberg-field, with less than half the required lifeboats, no red signal flares, no Rothschild or Rockefeller on board, and sank to the bottom of the north Atlantic Ocean. Less than a year later, now that the wealthy opposition was out of the way, the federal reserve was created and USA was turned into an incorporated business, with its own business ID number, '28 U.S.C. 3002 15."

While it is true that J.P. Morgan owned the Titanic and did not sail on its doomed maidan voyage ( here), there is no evidence to suggest he deliberately missed the trip because he knew the ship would sink. Historians have debated several reasons for Morgan to cancel his trip, but none is related to the Federal Reserve.

"I've never been able to find an authoritative 1912 source explaining the exact reason why J. P. Morgan cancelled his passage on the Titanic, but he definitely didn't do so mere 'hours' before the ship's departure," Titanic expert George Behe ( here) said in an email to Reuters.

Meanwhile, Don Lynch, a historian at the Titanic Historical Society (THS) ( bit.ly/3l7uI9O), said: "One of J.P. Morgan's biographers said that France was changing its laws to prevent Americans from exporting art treasures from that country, so Morgan went to Paris to oversee getting his purchases out of the country before the new laws went into effect."

Also from THS, advisory board member Ray Lepien, said that as well as the art treasures theory, "the 'official' explanation was that he (Morgan) fell ill and wanted to take the 'cure' at a spa in France with his mistress." Lepien added: "It could have been both reasons."

STRAUS, ASTOR AND GUGGENHEIM'S OPINIONS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE PROPOSAL

While it is also true that Isidor Straus, Macy's Department store owner ( here); John Jacob Astor, a property tycoon ( here and  here); and Benjamin Guggenheim, a mining boss, died in the 1912 disaster ( here and  here), there is no evidence to suggest they were the target of deliberate sabotage. There is also no evidence that these three men were against Morgan's centralised banking ideas.

Firstly, Titanic's maiden voyage had attracted many prominent names, and was dubbed the "Millionaire's Special" as a result ( here,  here).

Secondly, George Behe told Reuters he was unable to find any documents in his 45 years of researching the Titanic that proved the three men opposed the Federal Reserve. In fact, a Washington Post investigation found that while Astor and Guggenheim did not take a public stance on the matter, Straus reportedly spoke in favour of the proposal ( here and  here).

U.S. AS AN 'INCORPORATED BUSINESS'

It is not true to say the United States was turned into "an incorporated business, with its own business ID number" after the creation of the "federal reserve bank".

In 1913, the then-president Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law, creating a decentralised system that balances competing interests of private banks and populist sentiment ( here). It has had no impact on the status of the United States as a sovereign federal republic of 50 states founded and ruled by the Constitution ( here).

Professor Robert Hockett from Cornell Law School ( here) told Reuters: "It's always a tipoff that someone is ignorant of Fed matters when they refer to 'The Federal Reserve Bank.' There is no such entity. There is, rather, a 'Federal Reserve System' with twelve regional Federal Reserve District Banks spread all over the country (so as to avoid excessive centralisation) and a regulatory agency called the Federal Reserve Board of Governors to oversee this system."

The "business ID number", 28 U.S.C. 3002 15, is in fact a reference to a subsection of the U.S. Code of Laws that defines the United States ( here). Subsection 15 of section 3002 reads: "'United States' means federal corporation; an agency, department, commission, board, or other entity of the United States; or an instrumentality of the United States."

Hockett said: "The word 'corporation' as used in that legislation does not mean 'business corporation.' This is another key tipoff that someone does not know what they're talking about - conflating the word 'corporation' with the phrase 'business corporation' or 'private corporation.'

"'Corporation' is just the Latin word for 'body' or 'entity' (hence 'Marine Corps,' 'Corpus Christi,' and of course 'corpse'). It is used in legal parlance to refer to all sorts of legally created entities. No for-profit business is implied by this usage. To think otherwise is a bit like thinking a sailboat must be a motorboat because both words include the root 'boat.'"

TITANIC'S SINKING WAS AN ACCIDENT

Experts widely agree the liner disaster, which killed more than 1,500 people ( here), was an accident. They do, however, debate the finer details.

One explanation, Behe said, is that the ship's officers "mistakenly believed" that good visibility on the open sea would be an advantage for spotting any hazards ahead in good time. He added: "The ensuing collision with the iceberg was just an unfortunate result of a 'perfect storm' of unfavourable circumstances (dead-calm water, no moon, etc) and had nothing to do with any silly conspiracy theory connected with the federal reserve."

Reuters reported on another possible explanation in 2010 that suggested the boat hit an iceberg due to a basic steering error, and only sank as fast as it did because an official persuaded the captain to continue sailing ( here).

Encyclopaedia Britannica says such a steering mistake "caused the Titanic to turn slower than if it had been moving at its original speed. Most experts believe the ship would have survived if it had hit the iceberg head-on"( here).

Missing context. The meme has taken several facts about the Titanic out of context to falsely suggest the liner was sunk on purpose. Experts widely agree the disaster was an accident.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work   here  .

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CORRECTED-Fact Check-J.P. Morgan did not sink the Titanic to push forward plans for the U.S. Federal Reserve

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Repeated word removed from ninth paragraph

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Article that disproves the theory of the Olympic sinking and not the Titanic

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The dark theory that the Titanic never sank

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On 14 April 1912, the Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg off Newfoundland. This sinking killed 1,513 of the people who were on board the largest ocean liner in the world at the