The Great Titanic Conspiracy

by Robin Gardiner

  With public attention again centred on Captain Lord and the Californian instead of the disaster itself, the cover-up was well under way. The outbreak of the Great War just two years later would more than just divert public attention - it would remove many of the witnesses and their friends and relations together with a large percentage of the public themselves. Titanic would be all but forgotten and would remain so for the next 40 years -forgotten by all except the British Government, which wanted its gold back, and a few others who had realised that there was a story crying out to be told.

  Captain Lord, adamant that he was not guilty of anything, actually requested that he be formally charged with failing to go to the aid of another vessel after distress signals had been seen and reported to him. His request was denied. Lord would carry the stigma of allowing 1,500 people to drown for the rest of his long life and would never officially be given the opportunity to clear himself or even expose facts concerning what really happened that night. Late in life, incensed by the portrayal of himself and his actions in the film A Night to Remember, Lord did try to set the record straight but, despite repeated attempts to get the inquiry reopened, the BoT refused. Surely common sense tells us that Lord certainly had no doubts about his innocence or he would have let the matter rest in the hope that his part in the disaster would eventually be forgotten. Instead he repeatedly tried to bring the affair to the attention of succeeding generations of the public.

  However, because of the British Government’s refusal to formally charge him with any crime, Captain Lord never did attempt to explain why he had asked if there was any colour in the rockets seen from Californian. Nor was he ever asked why he did not go to bed that night, how enough fuel could be found for his ship when so many others lay idle, what was so important about a cargo of woollens, and so on. He never had to explain a remark he made to a newspaper reporter shortly after Californian reached Boston at the conclusion of that eventful voyage. The reporter had asked Lord for the position of his ship during the time Titanic was sinking. Captain Lord refused to answer the question on the grounds that the reporter was requesting ‘state secrets’. That single remark from Captain Stanley Lord is evidence enough to indicate a conspiracy involving at least himself and the British Government.

  As far as we know the only state secret involving the ships sailing under the British flag on the night of 14/15 April 1912 was the secret shipment of gold aboard Titanic.

  Chapter 22

  Conclusion

  We now have a somewhat different series of events surrounding the loss of the Titanic from those usually associated with the disaster. The governments of the major European powers were preparing for war years before it actually broke out in 1914. The British, with most to lose, searched for short cuts to increase naval superiority over their most likely adversary, Germany, by investing in merchant vessels that could hopefully supplement the fleet. To some extent the Germans did exactly the same thing, which meant that the mighty Royal Navy never achieved what it considered to be a decisive advantage. That those controlling the Navy were more than a little worried about coming events is clearly illustrated by the Committee of Imperial Defence meeting, where they declared that in the event of war they would not be able to spare any ships to support the Army. Ships for that purpose would have to be found elsewhere.

  The primary British-owned shipping line at the time, Cunard, had vessels built with the aid of Government subsidy that could quickly be converted into armed merchant cruisers, but this didn’t help the Army. The Army needed troopships. The only other major line sailing under the British flag was the American-owned White Star Line. Again, with the incentive of subsidies White Star agreed to build some particularly large ships specifically designed for use as troop carriers in the event of war. Luckily for Britain the owner of White Star was the anglophile multimillionaire John Pierpont Morgan. Unfortunately, while Mr Morgan had a soft spot for the British, he was also a hard-headed and ruthless businessman, with a penchant for collecting religious artefacts and other works of art from around the world.

  The Cunard liners, which entered service from 1906, soon proved worthless as warships, to the dismay of the British Government. They were much too fragile and far too costly to run. This must have set alarm bells ringing with regard to the other governmental project of producing cut-price troopships. Would they also turn out to be worthless? By 1911 the situation in Europe had deteriorated to the point that everyone in the know expected war to begin at any moment. They had to know if the new troopships worked or not.

  The Agadir crisis brought everything to a head. Morgan began shipping home to America all of the art treasures he had been displaying in major British museums, leaving those museums looking a little bare, and embarrassing the Government with what it saw as his defeatist attitude. We know that the collision between Olympic and the cruiser HMS Hawke is unlikely to have been a complete accident. The most likely explanation for the collision is that it was a test of the viability of the ‘Olympics’ as troopships and a rap on the knuckles for Mr Morgan. Unfortunately, Commander Blunt on the Hawke overdid things and all but destroyed the liner.

  White Star couldn’t make an insurance claim to cover the damage to its ship because a naval inquiry had predictably found that the collision was the company’s fault. It was left with a ship that was effectively beyond economic repair, a write-off, but it couldn’t afford to simply scrap a new ship that had just cost a million and a half pounds to build.

  Switching Olympic with her sister, which was nearing completion, was not a difficult undertaking for a shipyard with the resources and expertise of Harland & Wolff. That was the easy part of the operation. The difficulty would lie in subsequently disposing of the damaged member of the pair. Converting it into a reasonable facsimile of the second sister was no harder than the first part of the switch had been. Nobody was expecting a switch so they wouldn’t be looking too hard at either vessel. Once the makeover was complete it seemed a simple matter to take the crippled liner to sea and stage a fake collision with an iceberg. There was no apparent reason for anyone to be hurt in the accident, and as the vessel would not really be any less seaworthy than when she set out there would be plenty of time to get everyone off, or so they thought. So the first sister, masquerading as the second, prepared for what should have been a maiden voyage.

  It is not clear whether the intention was merely to pretend that the ship was very badly damaged, then claim on the insurance to actually put her right, or to sink her and be done with it. The second scenario seems the more likely, simply because the collision was supposed to take place in one of the deepest regions of the North Atlantic Ocean. It was inconceivable in 1912 that any vessel that sank in that location would ever be seen again, so once it had gone the chances of anyone finding out what had actually happened were negligible.

  Because there shouldn’t have been any real danger to the people on the ship, up to the time of the staged collision the voyage could be treated just like any other. A full load of passengers could be taken out together with a full, but hand-picked, crew. To allay any suspicions that might be lurking in the back of anyone’s mind, it was made known that J. P. Morgan himself, and a load of his valuable ancient artefacts, would be aboard - not that there was ever any chance that he actually would be. The White Star Line was so sure that there was no real danger involved that, distracted by making sure that everything else was going to plan, it completely forgot the third party insurance on the passengers, crew and baggage. It was not until the day after the liner had foundered and about 1,500 passengers and crew had died that Harold Sanderson arranged the passenger insurance. Propitiously the insurance company favoured by White Star had its offices in the very building that the line had occupied until the end of the 19th century. The officers of the insurance company must have been well known to the higher management of White Star. Despite the fact that such an insurance deal is of itself fraudulent, the insurance company did pay out, not that it actually cost them
anything. They recouped their losses by putting up the insurance rates across the board and charging all of the shipping lines a special premium, thus defrauding the shareholders of those lines.

  It would appear that the British Government was fooled into believing that the ship was going all the way to America. It arranged to ship a load of gold on Titanic, as it believed the ship to be. Only the higher echelons of the White Star Line and almost certainly J. P. Morgan himself knew that the liner was only going as far as the Grand Banks. This privileged information presented the conspirators with a heaven-sent opportunity, which put them in a position where they thought they couldn’t possibly lose. If they spirited the gold away before the ship sailed they would still be in pocket even if the insurance companies failed to pay up. If the insurance did pay, they stood to make a fortune. As we know, the British Navy has been searching the wreck for that gold since 1953 without any luck. They can’t find it because it isn’t there and hasn’t been since around Easter 1912.

  Ships were sent out to meet the Titanic when the staged collision took place in order to take off the passengers and crew. Most of these rescue ships were owned by the same company that owned the White Star Line, J. P. Morgan’s International Mercantile Marine. A couple of outsiders were brought in, such as the Cunard Line’s Carpathia and possibly a Canadian Pacific Line liner. Although they were notionally competitors, Cunard and White Star had been collaborating for years and would eventually merge. Canadian Pacific was owned by the American Canadian Pacific Railroad Company, and was therefore closely associated with J. P. Morgan. He had a lot of money tied up in the US railway system and actually owned all of the rolling stock on America’s eastern seaboard, so he was well used to dealing with the railway companies.

  The plan was simple and could easily have worked, in which case the Titanic, like so many other ships that have sunk in the North Atlantic, would now be forgotten. However, chance has a nasty habit of laughing at the most carefully thought-out plans of mere mortals.

  The plan to dispose of the Titanic, and with her all of the evidence that things were not as they should be, worked fine until the night of 14 April 1912, when it failed utterly.

  Californian made it to the prearranged meeting place in readiness to take off Titanic’s people, and stopped to wait. Captain Lord informed the liner of his whereabouts by wireless. Captain Smith on the Titanic had chosen his target icebergs from an ice warning from Mesaba received earlier that day. The rendezvous would hopefully be within easy calling distance of Californian. Some little distance away to the southwards the Carpathia was also moving to within striking distance of the rendezvous. Whether by chance or design the Canadian Pacific liner Mount Temple had also moved into the immediate area.

  Titanic’s lookouts, Fleet and Lee, spotted the icebergs ahead of the ship at about 11.15pm and attempted to alert the officers on the liner’s bridge, without any conspicuous success. It was a bitterly cold night and those officers were in all probability taking a short break in the chartroom where it was a lot warmer than out on the open-sided bridge. The officer of the watch, Chief Officer William McMaster Murdoch, obviously did not expect the ship to reach the ice quite so quickly or he would have been ready. As it was, there was nobody on the bridge to instruct the helmsman to alter course away from the iceberg that lay 10 or 12 miles away, directly ahead of the ship. There was still plenty of time to avert a disaster if only someone with some authority had heard the warnings from the crow’s-nest, but nobody did.

  The iceberg was only spotted by anyone in a position to do anything about it at the very last moment when Mr Murdoch returned to the bridge and went out onto the open wing. By that time the berg was probably slightly less than half a mile ahead of the ship. With her engines at full ahead there was still time for the liner to turn away from disaster, but Murdoch immediately ordered the engines full astern and the helm put hard a-starboard. Without the thrust from the central turbine engine, Titanic’s ability to turn sharply was dramatically reduced. However, it still appears that Mr Murdoch’s attempt to avoid the iceberg might have been successful, or at the very least reduced the collision to a minor scrape.

  Unfortunately for those aboard the Titanic there seems to have been another obstruction ahead and slightly to the left of the ice. We cannot be sure of exactly what this other obstruction was, but it is unlikely to have been more ice. More probably it was another ship or perhaps a wreck, similar to the one Olympic had struck on 24 February, just 50 days earlier. In view of what occurred later that night another ship is the more likely candidate. Whatever it was, it ripped open the forward part of the liner so badly that she could no longer remain afloat indefinitely. No doubt the life of the ship could have been extended if the pumps had been operational or not already fully occupied dealing with leaks that had been there since the vessel had left Southampton, or before.

  In the event no effective measures at all were taken to keep the liner afloat for as long as possible, to allow rescue ships to reach her in time to take everyone off. Instead, many of the officers, crew and passengers panicked and prepared to abandon ship. Even at this point there was still a chance. The officers on the bridge of Titanic had another steamer in view about 5 miles away. Red, white and blue distress signals were sent up in an effort to attract the attention of the stranger but she ignored them. Mr Lightoller later said that he wished he had a 6-inch gun so that he could have put a shot into the mystery vessel to wake her up. I have no doubt at all that this mystery ship was already wide awake. Titanic’s distress signals would have been clearly visible and audible to the stranger. It would have been all but impossible for the officers on her bridge and the lookouts in her crow’s-nest to not have been aware of a large, brilliantly illuminated liner only a few miles away, firing distress rockets. Instead of coming to the rescue the mystery ship appeared to have hung around for a while, as if waiting for something, and then to have quietly made off. If this mysterious vessel had been there by design, like Californian, then perhaps her skipper had realised that things had gone wrong and decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Or perhaps they had spotted the all-white rockets that were seen from Californian and assumed another vessel was on its way and their services were no longer required.

  As we now know, 705 survivors from Titanic managed to find places in lifeboats, one way or another - lifeboats that could easily have accommodated more than half as many again under normal circumstances. Conditions that night were anything but normal. The sea was as smooth as a millpond so, if they had been properly managed, the boats could have taken a great many more people than they were rated for. It is quite possible that instead of 1,500 people going down with the ship the same number might have been saved. We could have no better evidence of the panic that had gripped the ship during her final hours on the surface.

  Over and above those 705 people from Titanic, we seem to have another 98 from some other source. Where but from another ship could these survivors have come? And, perhaps more importantly, where did they go? That both Captains Lord and Rostron saw too many lifeboats at the scene of the sinking also argues that there was another, unknown, vessel involved in the disaster.

  Carpathia only picked up 13 of Titanic’s proper wooden lifeboats even though, according to Captain Rostron, people had been from all 16 of them. We know from the record that some people who had not survived the night in the open boats were taken aboard the Cunard vessel and were later buried at sea, so the fact that there were corpses in a lifeboat was no deterrent to picking them up. We also know that Californian found lifeboats at the scene, but Captain Lord declined to recover any of them. Perhaps both skippers had realised that there were too many boats and didn’t want that fact advertised.

  Even as Carpathia was making her way back to New York to land Titanic’s survivors, those very people were being sworn to secrecy about what had happened on the ship. A carefully prepared statement was drawn up exonerating both passengers and crew from any wrongdoing or incompe
tence. The statement, which purported to have come from surviving passengers, contained technical references and nautical terms that would only have been familiar to professional seamen. In short, it was written either by or with the aid of the surviving officers from Titanic and possibly the officers of Carpathia as part of a cover-up. Many of the assertions made in the statement can now be proven fictitious.

  Once Carpathia reached New York and off-loaded Titanic’s people and lifeboats, the public were kept well away from them. Passengers were whisked away, crew were detained incommunicado, and identifying marks were swiftly removed from the lifeboats. This proved to be a mistake, as it revealed the name of the ship for which the boats had been built - Olympic. A ship’s lifeboats were built by Harland & Wolff specifically for each individual vessel and were usually constructed aboard the ship for which they were intended.

  After the American Inquiry, which as we know was an incompetently handled farce, the crew of Titanic were returned to Britain where, once again, they were held incommunicado. When Lapland, the vessel bringing the surviving crew home, reached Plymouth, it was intercepted by a tender, the Sir Richard Grenville, which had brought out the two most senior White Star officials in Britain, no less that Harold Sanderson and E. C. Grenfell, together with a couple of other lesser White Star representatives. Also aboard the tender was a Mr Wolverstan from the Board of Trade, accompanied by four assistants, and Mr Woolven, representing the Receiver of Wrecks and the Customs & Excise. White Star and the British Government were not taking any chances that the survivors might not take seriously any instructions they were given.

  The survivors were eventually taken ashore and confined within the walls and railings of Plymouth Dockyard, well away from the questioning press and relatives who had been awaiting their return. Then, one by one, the survivors were questioned and instructed to say nothing to anyone about what had occurred aboard the ship. They were then obliged to sign the Official Secrets Act, confirming the involvement of the British Government in the cover-up. Signing the Act meant that crew members were liable to 20 years imprisonment if they ever divulged what they knew. This debriefing and signing of the Act took a couple of days, so friends and relatives of the surviving crew just had to wait.