Terrifying & True | The Unsolved Mysteries of the Titanic

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One of the greatest love stories of
the modern era, whether you like it

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or not, is about a giant
boat that was believed to be unsinkable,

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but that turned out to not be
the case. Now, the term Titanic

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is synonymous with something so big and
so beautiful that it has to fail.

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But there's so much more to the
story. What you are about topsy based

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on witness accounts, testimal piece,
and public record. This is terrifying and

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truth. When it comes to major
disasters, nothing is ever simple. Whether

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it's the assassination of John F.
Kennedy or perhaps the attack on the World

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Trade Center in two thousand and one. Everyone has a theory about how it

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could happen, and many times it
can't simply be that the world is a

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dangerous place. But the Titanic was
one of the first examples to grab the

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world's attention, to grab their imagination
and make them wonder is anything truly too

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big to fail. We're going to
dig deep into this mystery and talk about

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some theories rarely discussed, and we're
going to have a good time doing it.

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After these quick words from our sponsor, nearly everyone on earth has heard

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of the unsinkable ship but of course
there's more to the story than we know,

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so actually, don't pardon the pun. The pun is intentional. Let's

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dive in. On a dark night
in April of nineteen twelve, the Titanic

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crashed into a huge iceberg and tragically
sank in the freezing waters of the North

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Atlantic. Sadly, one thousand,
five hundred and seventeen out of the two

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thousand, two hundred and twenty three
passengers and crew lost their lives that night.

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It's been a century, but people
are still trying to make sense of

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this heartbreaking event. Many conspiracy theories
have emerged, and there are so many

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mysterious questions about the Titanic that have
been pointed out, and we too have

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loads of them waiting to be solved. So let's get started. The first

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and probably the most insane mystery circulating
about the Titanic tragedy lies in one simple

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yet powerful question. Was the ship
that sank truly the Titanic. It's hard

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to believe, but some people are
convinced that the ship that sank was not

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actually the Titanic. Let's break it
down. On April tenth, nineteen twelve,

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a luxurious liner set sail, and
five days later, tragedy struck,

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claiming the lives of around fifteen hundred
out of two thousand, two hundred and

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twenty three people on board. We
all agree on that part, But here's

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where things get interesting. Some people
swear it wasn't the Titanic at all,

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but that it was actually the RMS
Olympic, a nearly identical sister ship.

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Now, the Olympic had a little
accident the year before, and here's where

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the plot thickens. The story goes
that the owners of both ships wanted a

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fat insurance payout, so they sneakily
passed off the damaged Olympic as the Titanic,

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and get this, they then supposedly
sank it on purpose. There is

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a second group of people who believe
that the Titanic's fate was sealed by a

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fire on board. Multiple documentaries and
books present convincing evidence that the ship,

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which will stick to calling the Titanic, had suffered from a coal fire that

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blazed for three whole weeks before it
even set sail. This fire might have

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weakened the ship's hull, which eventually
led to its sinking after colliding with an

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iceberg, but This brings up another
question, did the Titanic truly hit an

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iceberg in the first place. This
is where things really start to get even

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more complex, because in nineteen eighty
five, after oceanographer Robert Ballard finally found

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the Titanic's remains way down at the
bottom of the ocean two point five miles

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deep, guess what he discovered something
mind blowing. The ship had broken in

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two on the surface before sinking.
This had experts and laymen alike talking about

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the Titanic all over again. Many
wondered why had it cracked in half?

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Was the Titanic not as well built
as they had thought. Later on,

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experts brought some pieces of the ship
to the surface, and it seemed like

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the low quality rivets that held the
steel hull plates together might have been the

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problem. But according to other sources, such as the Scientific American magazine,

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the Titanic had some other design issues
as well. The steel of the ship's

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hull and the iron of its rivets
faced a brittle fracture because of cold temperatures,

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sulfur content, and high speeds.
That sounds like a recipe for disaster

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right. The steel basically shattered and
those rivets popped out like popcorn, making

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the ship sink twenty four times faster
than anyone would have expected. Then,

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in nineteen ninety seven, James Cameron's
film Titanic came out, showing the ships

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last moments, But the search for
answers didn't stop there. New books came

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out, and some historians and scientists
had fresh evidence that challenged what people at

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the time knew. They believed it
was the rivets, not the steel,

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that caused the disaster. Others said
the ship didn't rise high in the air

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like we had thought, it sank
while still flat on the surface, And

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like most other aspects surrounding the incident, this area too remains gray, a

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mystery with little hope for a solid, black and white answer. But if

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we swim a little deeper into the
murky waters of conspiracy theory, there are

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some people who also believe that JP
Morgan, the millionaire banker, planned the

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entire sinkin in order to eliminate his
rivals. According to this theory, Morgan

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initially planned to be on the Titanic
himself, but changed his mind at the

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last minute. Instead, he allegedly
wanted to ensure that three other millionaires,

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Jacob Astor, Isidor Strauss and Benjamin
Guggenheim met their doom on board. To

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make things even more puzzling, the
theory claims that Morgan targeted these men because

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they opposed the creation of the Federal
Reserve. That's right, the private organization

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that basically decides the value of our
money. They can cause inflation, they

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can cause all kinds of economic catastrophes. Many people for a long time have

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believed the Federal Reserve is a bit
devious. But of course there's no solid

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evidence to suggest that Astor or Guggenheim
were against the Federal Reserve and Strauss supported

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it. And the theory also doesn't
explain how Morgan could have caused the ship

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to hit an Iceberg. Alternative versions
of this conspiracy point fingers at the Rothschild

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banking family or the Jesuits as the
ones behind the plot to kill Astor,

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Strauss and Guggenheim on the Titanic.
However, and I want to make this

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very clear, involving the Rothchilds as
an international conspirator that would be rooted in

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centuries of anti Semitic beliefs. Apart
from the conspiracy theories, there are a

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few possible factors that could have contributed
to the unsinkable Titanic sinking. Some of

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these are very concerning and some quite
doubtful, but of course these are just

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possibilities. What exactly happened is still
a mystery, so let's take a look

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at these other possibilities. One is
that the wireless radio operator dismissed a key

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iceberg warning less than an hour before
the Titanic hit the iceberg. Another nearby

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ship, the Californian, radio to
say it had been stopped by a dense

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ice field. But since the warning
didn't begin with the prefix MSG or master's

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service gram, which would have required
the captain to directly acknowledge receiving the message,

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the Titanic's radio operator, Jack Phillips, considered the other ship's warning non

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urgent and didn't pass it along.
Another is the Titanic may have taken a

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fatal wrong turn. According to a
claim made in two thousand and ten by

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Louise Patton, the granddaughter of the
most senior Titanic officer to survive, Charles

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Ltoler, one of the ship's crew
members panicked after hearing the order to turn

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quote hard as starboard in order to
avoid the approaching iceberg. Because the ships

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at the time operated on two different
steering order systems, he became confused and

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turned the wrong way, directly toward
the ice. This next one is a

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bit interesting to me. It's about
mirages and hazy horizons which were created by

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weather conditions. Two studies done around
the time of the one hundredth anniversary of

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the Titanic disaster in two thousand and
twelve suggested that nature played a key role

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in the ship's fate. The first
art that the Earth came unusually close to

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both the Moon and the Sun that
year, increasing their gravitational pool on the

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ocean and producing record tidal waves,
which caused increased amounts of floating ice in

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the North Atlantic around the time of
the sinking. The second study, by

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British historian Tim Moulton, claimed the
atmospheric conditions on the night of the disaster

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might have caused a phenomenon known as
super refraction. This bending of light could

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have created mirages or other optical illusions
that prevented the Titanic's lookouts from seeing the

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iceberg clearly. It also would have
made the Titanic appear closer and smaller to

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the nearby ship, the Californian,
causing its crew to assume it was a

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different vessel altogether without a radio and
preventing them from attempting to communicate. Another

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is that the lookouts had no binoculars. Second officer David Blair, who held

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the key to the Titanic store of
binoculars in his pocket, was transferred off

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the ship before it left for its
maiden voyage from Southampton and forgot to hand

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over the key to the officer who
replaced him. At a later inquiry into

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the sinking, a lookout on the
Titanic said binoculars might have helped them spot

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and dodged the iceberg in time.
Blair kept the key as a memento of

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his near miss. It was auctioned
off in two thousand and seven and fetched

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some ninety thousand pounds. Another theory
is a lack of lifeboats. No matter

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what caused the Titanic to sink,
such a massive loss of life could probably

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have been avoided if the ship had
carried sufficient lifeboats for its passengers and crew,

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But the White star Liner left with
only twenty lifeboats, which was the

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legal minimum. Though Maurice Clark,
the civil and who inspected the Titanic in

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Southampton, recommended it carry fifty percent
more lifeboats. His handwritten notes at the

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time later revealed that he felt his
job would be threatened if he did not

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give the famous ship the go ahead
to sail. Now, before we wrap

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up this deep dive, let's talk
about some of the things that people usually

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don't discuss when the Titanic comes up. For example, how the ship had

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some real life love stories. Yes, that's true. According to the Belfast

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Telegraph, there were thirteen honeymooning couples
on board. That's some unfortunate romance on

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the high seas. One of the
most famous pairs was jj Astor, a

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millionaire and his young wife who was
five months pregnant When disaster struck. Mister

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Astor helped his wife into a lifeboat
before he sadly perished. During the official

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Senate inquiry, a witness also shared
a touching tale about Isadore and Ida Strauss,

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who owned Macy's department stores. They
were a long married couple deeply in

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love. The witness, Archibald Gracie, said that he overheard them talking about

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facing the tragedy together. They refused
to be a part and chose to share

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their fate with bravery. Missus Strauss
was urged to go into a lifeboat without

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her husband, but she wouldn't hear
of it. Eventually, they both met

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a tragic end, but their love
and devotion lived on. It is also

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true that not many people have been
able to properly see the wreckage of the

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Titanic, and some experts argue that
the wreckage should be left alone because the

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ship could be considered a final resting
place, a type of underwater gravesite.

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Considering the fact that out of fifteen
hundred people who died, only three hundred

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and forty bodies were recovered, with
one thousand, one hundred and sixty remaining

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lost at sea, some photographs which
were released in two thousand and ten,

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which show clothing and laced up shoes
in suggestive positions, make us believe that

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bodies once lay there. It's also
possible that preserved corpses remain inside the ship

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itself, where modern explorers can't see, and considering the fate of the recent

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ocean Gate experience, perhaps we should
leave the Titanic alone. If you are

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somehow not aware Ocean Gate was the
owner of the titan submersible that imploded during

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a voyage to the Titanic this very
year in two thousand and twenty three,

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killing all five people on board.
The company CEO stocked and Rush was among

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those who perished in the disaster in
the North Atlantic Ocean. Other people include

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British businessman Hamish Harding, French diver
Paul Henry Nargole, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dalwood,

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and Dalwood's nineteen year old son,
Suliman Dalwood. Ocean Gates titan submersible

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was supposed to go to the one
hundred and eleven year old remains of the

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Titanic about twelve thousand, five hundred
feet below the ocean's surface, a distance

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that is about ten times the height
of the Empire State Building. But it

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was only about one hour and forty
five minutes into the dive, heading straight

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for the Titanic, when it lost
contact with its mothership on June eighteenth,

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two thousand and twenty three. In
many ways, the ocean's largest grave site

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has claimed more tenants under its watery
epitaph. It's a harrowing thing to think

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about what it would be like to
be on board the Titanic, to be

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traveling across the ocean, something that
really has only been accessible to the everyday

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person for maybe the last one hundred
and sixty years. Some were there for

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leisure, others simply commuters. But
in the end the boat sank in a

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way. The least we can do
is learn a lesson from it, and

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that lesson is simple. Nothing,
no matter how big, no matter how

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impressive, is above failure, whether
it be a piece of technology or a

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person. We all are susceptible,
and we need to all stay a bit

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frosty and watch our bags. But
what do you think? Do you think

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the Titanic had some kind of conspiracy
behind it? Do you think that it

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was simply bad luck? Or was
it any small mistakes that all added up

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to one of the biggest disasters in
world history? I myself, I'm not

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sure. After learning more about this, all I know is the Titanic was

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the biggest boat of all time,
and now it's more known as the biggest

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mystery of all time. So let's
take a moment and honor it's legacy.

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Terrifying and True is narrated by Enrique
Kuto. It's executive produced by Rob Fields,

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produced by Daniel Wilder, with the
original theme music by raymad Us.

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If you have a story you'd like
us to cover on the program, send

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us an email at Weekly Spooky at
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And I want to say a big
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end of the show, and they
are Johnny Nicks, bobotopia dot com,

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Megan Hua, Julia Kirsh, Brent
mccullus, Steve King, Karen we Met,

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Jack Ker and Craig Cohen. Thank
you all so much and we'll see

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you next time right here on Weekly
Spooky and Terrifying and True