Was the Titanic disaster a big insurance scam?

Hornet_UK

Hornet_UK

Well-Known Member
Joined
1 Nov 2009
Messages
176
Location
Me Hertfordshire, Boat Chichester
Visit site
I found this presentation on the interweb which caught my eye because of a comment I made on Dylan's thread, the one about his mate who had just bought a westerly Ocean Lord of the Rings (one of the ones that doesnt look like a hull with a shed on top), so I thought it worth a post. I will warn you it is about an hour and a half long but very compelling, even if you think it is complete bollox it is a great story none the less.

http://youtu.be/zOca_wTZ5BQ

PS. If it has been posted before call it a new thread for those that didn't see it!:nonchalance:
 
It's too long to watch, but if this is the theory that the ship that sank was actually the Olympic (which had been damaged earlier in a collision) then that was debunked by Dr Ballard. The propellers on the Titantic wreck are stamped 401, the correct hull number for the Titanic.
 
They knew about Dr Ballard as they had crystal balls and changed the propellers!

Seriously what is it about some people that make up these conspiracy theories? In most cases they fly in the face of all the evidence and rational thought.

I have posted before about a difficult character at work that believes the twin towers was blown up by the owner/ CIA and practically every other conspiracy theory going around! I just cannot get a handle on how his and others think. WRT the original OP in this thread if it's the first time he has read this and not aware of the contrary evidence it's probably understandably misleading.
 
I have just finished reading 'And the band played on' about Jock Hume, violinist in the band who played as the ship sank. One of the first insurance scams was perpetrated by his father, who tried to claim for two ancient and expensive violins that Jock supposedly had with him. An interesting book, although little of it to do with Titanic.
 
vyv_cox said:
I have just finished reading 'And the band played on' about Jock Hume, violinist in the band who played as the ship sank. One of the first insurance scams was perpetrated by his father, who tried to claim for two ancient and expensive violins that Jock supposedly had with him. An interesting book, although little of it to do with Titanic.
Click to expand...
I read that book recently, his father was a real B*****D ,especially to Jock's widow. It is a fascinating book and well worth reading as it paints a very good picture of how the musicians on ships worked at that time.
 
Tony Cross said:
It's too long to watch, but if this is the theory that the ship that sank was actually the Olympic (which had been damaged earlier in a collision) then that was debunked by Dr Ballard. The propellers on the Titantic wreck are stamped 401, the correct hull number for the Titanic.
Click to expand...

And I have read that the Shakespeare plays weren't written by Shakespeare but by another man of the same name.
 
snowleopard said:
And I have read that the Shakespeare plays weren't written by Shakespeare but by another man of the same name.
Click to expand...

And the moon landings were all faked and Buzz Aldrin took to the bottle because of the stress of the cover up.
And the British bombed Pearl Harbor.
Andthe Nazi gold is buried in my back garden
Hang on------get me a spade.
 
The PR department of BAS farmed out questions from the public to relevant members of staff, and I think I got my name on the list as the person best at handling the stranger questions! The one about the "hole at the Pole" was a regular one; after giving the serious answers I usually went on to say something like "We wish it were true - it would make getting grants from governments much easier"! My favourite was a guy who wanted to know if an iceberg had calved at a specific time, so he could verify a telepathic message from a penguin.... There's an art to replying calmly, factually, seriously and often completely tongue in cheek to such things!

Mostly these conspiracy theories don't begin to consider the sheer number of people who'd have to be in on it for it to work. The Apollo conspiracy theories would require hundreds of thousands of people to collaborate and tell the same story! And a story saying that the Titanic was swapped for the Olympic would have to be known to hundreds of people (the crew of each vessel, the dockyard workers, the chandlers and suppliers); at least one of them would have sold his/her story to the papers at the time.

As noted above, Bob Ballard has totally exploded any such conspiracy theory, but it was balmy in the first place.
 
vyv_cox said:
I have just finished reading 'And the band played on' about Jock Hume, violinist in the band who played as the ship sank. One of the first insurance scams was perpetrated by his father, who tried to claim for two ancient and expensive violins that Jock supposedly had with him. An interesting book, although little of it to do with Titanic.
Click to expand...

I can't find the link now, but a violin from the titanic was just recently sold by auction, and made quite a large sum for a damaged and unplayable instrument.
 
Last edited:
If it was an insurance scam it would have been insured for more than it cost. Titanic was insured for US$5,000,000 but the estimated cost of building the ship was equivalent to US$7,500,000. White Star line paid out compensation to passengers that cost them about half of the insured sum. The losses from the Titanic, followed by the loss of her sister ship in World War 1 contributed to the company being taken over.
 
Norman_E said:
If it was an insurance scam it would have been insured for more than it cost. Titanic was insured for US$5,000,000 but the estimated cost of building the ship was equivalent to US$7,500,000. White Star line paid out compensation to passengers that cost them about half of the insured sum. The losses from the Titanic, followed by the loss of her sister ship in World War 1 contributed to the company being taken over.
Click to expand...
Agreed - there isn't much point in a scam that yields no profit
By coincidence I was in Lloyds last week and saw the broker's slip for Titanic (and Olympic - it was the one slip for both ships), and they gave me a copy. IIRC the hull was insured for a little over £1m, spread across something like 80 underwriters who signed the (Willis Faber) slip. It was of course a sterling risk, not dollar
 
saltylegs said:
As I can see where she was built from my office, all I can say is "she was alright when she left here" :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I have played on the same cricket team as Tom Andrew's (the architect of the Titanic) brother, Willie. I have also crewed for his great nephew, Tom, who was the British Flying Fifteen champion although not in competition where the crew was his wife.
 
When I used to help run Total Quality Management courses a gazillion years ago when that sort of thing was all the rage, we used the Titanic disaster in our brainstorming and cause & effect sessions, consequently I did quite a bit of reading on the disaster. What is not widely known is that she had a fire in one of her coal bunkers that was found after leaving Queenstown, these things tended to smoulder away rather than burst into flame, but they did generate a lot of heat. The only way to put these sorts of fires out was to burn the coal in the bunker, that's why Captain Smith was lighting boilers as he crossed even though he knew there was ice about. He must have reasoned that extinguishing the coal fire was much more important than the tiny risk of hitting an iceberg. As with most disasters there is rarely one single cause, and I think with the Titanic, as with so many other disasters, it was the cumulative effect of several factors coming together at the right (or wrong) time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top