The Great Titanic Conspiracy

by Robin Gardiner

  The speed reduction, as it turned out, was not enough on its own to prevent the patched-up hull from rapidly deteriorating. The North Atlantic, in winter time possibly the roughest sea in the world, did nothing to help. Before many crossings had been completed the ship’s hull began to fall apart, so it was back to the yard for a few hundred rivets to be replaced and a little more reinforcement.

  Then it was back to sea for another couple of voyages, still at reduced speeds. To reinforce the excuse that this slower cruising speed was a result of the steadily worsening coal shortage, Olympic began shipping extra coal from America in some of her cabins. While this might have convinced some people that the excuse was genuine, it should have had exactly the opposite effect. Coal produces extraordinary amounts of dust that would creep into every nook and cranny of the cabins being used as storage space on these voyages. It also has a very distinctive odour that permeates practically everything and is almost impossible to eliminate. Old railway bridges and tunnels, at least 30 years after the last steam trains passed under or through them, still have the unmistakable smell of coal about them. That same smell would have rendered cabins on Olympic completely unusable as passenger accommodation for years after the last of the coal had been removed. Obviously the White Star Line was not concerned about the loss of cabin space, which is entirely understandable if it was planning on losing the ship itself in the near future.

  By the end of February 1912 Harland & Wolff had just about completed the conversion of Titanic back to her original configuration as a passable copy of her older sister. It was time to bring Olympic back to the yard and make the switch.

  At 4.26pm on 24 February, at position 44°20’N, 38°36’W, during an eastbound crossing, Olympic supposedly ran over some uncharted underwater obstruction. The vessel shuddered violently, a condition that Captain Smith and his engineers appear to have been able to bring about at will. (Violent shuddering that would shake the entire vessel could easily be induced merely by suddenly running the main engines full astern while the ship was still moving forward at a respectable speed.) The story that the ship had apparently lost a blade from her port main propeller was circulated aboard. Whether or not Olympic had really lost a propeller blade is open to question, as the ship continued on her way and arrived at Southampton on time. A missing blade from the huge 27-foot-diameter propeller would have meant that it was so badly out of balance that the engine would have to be stopped. Had the propeller continued to revolve the vibration caused would have literally shaken the ship to pieces in short order. If the engine was stopped, Olympic, steaming on just her questionable starboard main and turbine engine, would have struggled to maintained her cruising speed and arrive in port on time. The conclusion is obvious. The ship did arrive in Southampton on time, therefore the starboard engine was not stopped, therefore it had not lost a propeller blade. The incident, including the violent shuddering of the ship, was all part of the excuse for her to return to Belfast for the switch.

  After discharging her passengers at Southampton, Olympic departed for Belfast, arriving there in the afternoon of 28 February. The replacement of a propeller blade would normally be a one-day operation for the workforce at Harland & Wolff’s Queen’s Island yard, so we would have expected Olympic to have left on the 29th, 1912 being a leap year. As it turned out, the BoT inspector at the yard discovered that about 300 more failed rivets below the waterline of the liner had needed to be replaced and another 200 or so needed a little work. Perhaps another day’s work was needed, making two days in all. In fact Olympic, or a ship pretending to be her, didn’t leave until 6 March, a full seven days after her arrival. Any lingering doubts as to whether or not the switch was needed would have been amply dispelled by the failure of this latest batch of rivets in the shell plating of the ship, most of them in the area around the point where she had been rammed by HMS Hawke. The ship that quietly sailed out of Belfast on 6 March 1912 was not Olympic at all, but her sister Titanic.

  During the preceding week, all of the major conversion work having been carried out over the last five months, the last-minute transfer of minor items like linen, headed notepaper and envelopes, menus, lifeboat nameplates and the rubber stamps from the ship’s post office were moved from Olympic to Titanic and vice versa. Inevitably items were overlooked, among them at least one of the rubber post office stamps. Letters bearing Titanic’s postal stamp did leave the ship we now know as Olympic at Cherbourg in the period between 6 March 1912 and when Titanic first began her maiden voyage 35 days later.

  The name Olympic, cut into either side of the bow of the older sister, was replaced with that of Titanic. The same operation, although in reverse order, was carried out aboard the new Titanic, which for the next 23 years would sail as Olympic.

  The cutting patterns for the new names had been made in something approaching secrecy, over the preceding Christmas holiday period, by a Mr Williams. Williams’s reward for surreptitiously making these patterns was extra holidays with pay, promotion to a better job with the guarantee of employment for life if he wanted it, and new accommodation close to the yard at the company’s expense. When the White Star Line was absorbed into Cunard in the early 1930s Mr Williams was absorbed along with it.

  It now appears that during the time the alterations to the ships were ongoing, a keen amateur photographer recorded at least some of what was happening. John Rochford Waters worked as a harbour master at Ardglass, just south of Belfast, during the relevant period. On his days off, because of his interest both in photography and ships, he regularly made the trip up to Belfast. On a vantage point on the opposite side of the River Lagan from the Queen’s Island yard, John Waters set up his camera. He continued as harbour master at Ardglass right up until the eve of the Second World War. Over the years he told his family about what he had seen and that he believed ‘there was something odd about the whole business of the loss of the Titanic’. Unfortunately John Waters is no longer with us, but he does have a single surviving family member who apparently still has the photographs.

  Chapter 8

  Finishing ‘Titanic’

  With Titanic gone from the yard, Harland & Wolff was faced with the prospect of converting the battered Olympic into something they could pass of as a brand-new ship. Time was short because the date for the vessel’s supposed maiden voyage had already been set. The ship was due to leave Southampton on 10 April, so, allowing for the fact that sea trials and provisioning at the Hampshire port would have to be included, the yard had little more than three weeks to complete the work, a seemingly impossible task even for the finest shipbuilders in the world.

  Accepting the fact that a complete conversion could not be accomplished in the available time was more than half the battle. The work would be kept to a minimum and only what was absolutely essential would be done. Because views of the exterior of the ship had already been made public, those conversions would have top priority. A couple of small extra portholes were cut in a crew toilet on E Deck, as these would be clearly visible to the general public when the ship reached Southampton. The same applied to the cabin windows along the outside of B Deck, but as the superstructure was built of steel only half as thick as that used on the hull proper, this wouldn’t take very long to do.

  Constructing and fitting out the cabins themselves was a different matter. It would take months to fit all of the plumbing, electrical wiring and wood panelling in what was supposed to be a first-class area of the ship. Anyway, it would be a terrible waste of costly materials if the ship was to be scuttled on her maiden voyage, and Harland & Wolff didn’t have money to waste on unnecessary trivia. The extra cabins were omitted; only the windows along the promenade deck were changed. Towards the forward end of B Deck a small number of cabins had been built when the vessel was originally constructed (see the plans), and these were retained.

  As already described, we know that the cabins that should have been all along the outer edge of B Deck on Titanic were absent because, while the ship was sinkin
g, a steward, Edward Wheelton, walked along B Deck checking that all the cabins there were empty and locked. While he was doing so he met Thomas Andrews, the manager of Harland & Wolff, and one of the designers of the ‘Olympic’ class ships, doing the same thing. While he was on B Deck the steward noticed that boats 5, 7 and 9 were no longer hanging from their davits but had already left the ship. However, boat 11 was still loading because Wheelton could see it from the deck he was on. For the steward to be able to see whether the lifeboats were there or not he would have to be able to get close to the windows and look out of them, as the boats were loading two decks above him. Quite obviously he would not have been able to do this if the outside of B Deck was cabins, particularly if those cabins were locked. As boats 5 and 7 were sited at the forward end of the boat deck, while 9 and 11 were among those kept at the after end, we can be sure that Wheelton was able to walk almost the full length of B Deck and look out of the windows as he went. B Deck can only have been an open promenade area.

  One advertised difference on B Deck between Olympic and Titanic was the inclusion on the latter of what were known as the two millionaire suites. On the Titanic these suites had their own private promenade decks partitioned off from the first-class public promenade space, whereas on Olympic they did not. In other respects the two millionaire suites were the same on both vessels. All the shipbuilders needed to do was partition off the necessary section of B Deck to fool anybody into believing that part of the ship was as it should be. To be sure that nobody looked too closely, they would put their own men in the suites for the voyage.

  When James Cameron was making the blockbuster movie Titanic he made a number of descents to the wreck. Unlike the dives carried out by Robert Ballard’s team and those of the French IFREMER organisation, James Cameron was not financed by any government, so he could look at whatever he wanted to. Cameron had another major advantage over other explorers of the wreck inasmuch as the small, remotely-operated vehicle that he took down with him was regarded as nothing more than a film prop and therefore expendable. Other explorers had taken their own ROVs (remotely-operated vehicles) with them, but as these midget self-propelled submarines are expensive they had taken no chances with them. With no such constraints James Cameron sent his ROV deeper into the wreck than anyone else had dared to go. His little remote-controlled vehicle descended through two decks in order to reach the millionaire suite on the port side of B Deck. This suite, B52, slightly larger than its counterpart on the starboard side, had been supposedly designed for the use of J. P. Morgan, but was actually occupied by J. Bruce Ismay on the maiden voyage. The ROV found its way into the once palatial sitting room of the luxury suite. The foundering of the vessel and almost 80 years beneath the North Atlantic had taken their toll. Little remained of the opulence that once had been, except for the marble fireplace surround, which was still firmly fixed in place, as described earlier.

  With the forward part of B Deck well in hand, Harland could turn its attention to the alterations required at the after end. Much had been made of the fact that Titanic was to have a first-class restaurant that was somewhat larger than that of her sister. Along the starboard side of the enlarged restaurant there was to be a whole new feature, the Café Parisien, which occupied space that had been promenade on Olympic. These did present a problem for the builders. They had to be there or somebody was bound to notice; and they had to look right, because first-class passengers would be using them. The problem was not in the structure of the alterations as, like the rest of B Deck, it was built of relatively lightweight steel sheet. The problem was with the floor covering. On Olympic the public rooms had linoleum tiles on the floors, which are not easy to lift or re-lay. It would be a time-consuming exercise to make good the flooring so that it would not be obvious to the casual observer, and time was something the builders were short of. Once again the answer was simple - carpet.

  Rather than trying to make good the tiled floors, they would be roughly patched up and carpet would be laid over the top of them. It is very much quicker to lay carpet than to lay tiles under the conditions facing shipbuilders. Another point in favour of the carpet is that it would cover up any small blemishes such as cigar burns or scuffs from boots and shoes, which would otherwise be impossible to disguise. Nobody in their right mind would lay floor tiles then carpet over them without a very good reason. The wreck of the ship we know as Titanic is surrounded by hundreds of linoleum floor tiles exactly matching those in Olympic’s public rooms shown in photographs taken aboard Olympic before she entered service, and in artists’ impressions made while the older sister was still under construction. The White Star Line explained this change from tiled floors to carpet by claiming that Titanic was Olympic perfected.

  The name on the bow and stern of the vessel was altered in exactly the same way that it had been on Titanic a few weeks earlier. The old incised name on the bows was filled and new lettering cut using Mr Williams’s patterns. The stern nameplate was a slightly different proposition inasmuch as it was proper plating with raised lettering spelling out ‘OLYMPIC and, in smaller letters underneath, ‘LIVERPOOL’. For this they simply ground off the original name and replaced it with ‘TITANIC. Because the ship was not intended to last for any length of time, the attachment of this nameplate was botched. While the ship was on her way to the bottom of the sea it fell off. There is no name on the stern of the wreck.

  There were a myriad other small alterations to make, such as cutting a couple of extra portholes in the starboard side of the ship’s forecastle Deck C, as this was a readily visible recognition point, which had been overlooked when converting the real Titanic into a lookalike of her sister. When Titanic as Olympic had left Belfast in early March she had 16 portholes in this deck where she should only have had 14. The ship’s crow’s-nest bell seems to have been another item that was overlooked during the first part of the switch, although Titanic’s original bell has never turned up. There was plenty of time to change it during the next 25 years or so that the ship remained in service, or perhaps the name that would have been cast into it was simply ground off when the identity of the vessel was changed. The crow’s-nest bell from the wreck has been recovered and there is no ship’s name on it.

  Minor items such as the ship’s name on cast nameplates fixed to the bows of the lifeboats were no problem whatsoever. It was simply a matter of unscrewing the plates from the boats aboard one ship and fixing them to the boats on the other. In this way the boats would pass a casual inspection. However, a closer look would identify the ship from which they came. After the sinking 13 wooden lifeboats were recovered from the ship we know as Titanic and were taken to New York. This episode will be dealt with later, but for the time being we should know that while at New York the name ‘Olympic’ was found to be carved into the gunwales. The incised names were quickly filled with putty and painted over. The whole operation was witnessed by a retired captain who had taken a job in the docks to supplement his income. For whatever reason he kept quiet about what he had seen for almost 40 years before telling his story to a reporter from the New York Times. His story might have been regarded as apocryphal were it not substantiated by events on the other side of the Atlantic, recorded a few years later by an Admiral of the Royal Navy. As mentioned, this part of the story will be dealt with in some detail when we explain what happened to the lifeboats recovered by the rescue ship Carpathia after the disaster.

  By the middle of March 1912 the vessel lying in Belfast had begun to look very much as she should have done if she was really Titanic. A quick coat of paint on the hull and superstructure would go a long way towards completing the illusion that this was a new ship, at least when viewed from the outside. Only someone who knew the ships intimately would notice that a cowl vent on the port side of Olympic’s forecastle deck, which should not appear on Titanic, was suddenly there for all to see. Vents immediately behind the bridge had also apparently moved from ship to ship, but who was likely to notice?

  Inside the
engineering areas of the ship problems were beginning to mount up. Boiler furnaces that had been worked hard for three-quarters of a year could not be made to look brand new. Hot steel rusts at an alarming rate and stokers’ shovels would inevitably leave scars on furnace doors and around the mouth of the furnace itself. Any experienced fireman would know immediately that the furnace he was feeding with coal was anything but new, no matter how thoroughly it had been cleaned up. With a new coal-burning ship nearing completion, some boilers would be fired up to provide heating and electrical power, but only a limited number, and they would hardly have been overworked. There would be no comparison between boilers that had been fired in the builder’s yard and those that had been fired to provide the motive power for a large ship battling a North Atlantic storm. As a master mariner explained to me, ‘Only an idiot would not know that he was dealing with furnaces that had seen considerable service.’

  This simple truth could well be the explanation behind a curious happening soon after the ship left the builders. For her sea trials a special team of firemen was brought across the Irish Sea from Liverpool to feed the hungry furnaces with coal. After the trials the same team fired the ship for her trip from Belfast to Southampton. It should be remembered that there was a major coal strike going on at the time and many ships were languishing in port because there was not enough coal available for them to put to sea. Consequently there were a lot of firemen, and other seamen, out of work and looking for employment on any ship with enough fuel to leave harbour. The crew of firemen that brought the ship known as Titanic down from Belfast, with just one exception, Thomas McQuillan, deserted the vessel on her arrival at Southampton, despite the difficulties they were bound to encounter in finding alternative employment. The White Star Line had to recruit a complete new gang of firemen and trimmers for the Titanic’s maiden voyage. Of course, the new gang would believe that they were working in stokeholds that had at least seen some hard work as the ship steamed at high speed from the builders to the line’s Hampshire terminal. Even so, the firemen who signed on at Southampton must have thought that the gang who had brought the ship down from Belfast were an incompetent bunch to have done so much damage in so short a time. The engine room crews who also signed on at Southampton were mostly men who had served on Olympic before, and although the engines had been cleaned up they must have known that they were not new. Still, any signs of wear could be explained away as the result of testing and the short haul from the builders.