After the Titanic struck an iceberg and sunk on April 14th 1912, taking 1503 souls with her, many controversial theories have been put forward to explain the sinking.
According to one conspiracy theory, the sinking of the Titanic was set up in order to eliminate men opposed to the formation of the Federal Reserve.
More specifically, it was JP Morgan, the famous financier and owner of the Titanic, who wanted to eliminate several prominent wealthy businessmen (Benjamin Guggenheim, Isidor Strauss and John Jacob Astor) who opposed his plan for the creation of the Federal Reserve bank. As the theory goes, the Titanic’s Captain, Edward Smith, was a member of the Catholic order of Jesuits and his ‘master’, doing the bidding of JP Morgan, commanded him to sink the ship.
Admittedly, it does seems a bit bizarre that briefly before the RMS Titanic was set to sail to New York, JP Morgan canceled his reservation, claiming poor health, whilst Guggenheim, Strauss and Astor boarded the ship and went down with her in the ice cold North Atlantic waters on that fateful night.
So, did JP Morgan arrange to have the ship sink in the North Atlantic?
Well, mostly all the evidence for this theory is coincidental and is built on the following facts:
- JP Morgan funded the building of the Titanic.
- JP Morgan booked a ticket for Titanic’s maiden voyage but cancelled at the last second. So to did his friend, Milton Hersey.
- There were only white flares on board, no red flares to signal for help during distress. Also, the crew could not access the binoculars in the crow’s nest.
- It was one of the first ships of it’s kind with the ability to seal people below it’s decks.
- Edward Smith was incredibly experienced and would be highly unlikely to avoid necessary precautions (such as leaving port without red flares).
- The Federal Reserve was formed the year after the sinking.
One major flaw in the theory is that there is not much credible evidence suggesting that the wealthy men on board were actually opposed to the formation of the bank.
Although it would make a really good conspiracy theory movie, we don’t believe the Federal Reserve were implicated in the sinking of the Titanic. That’s not to say there is no conspiracy behind the sinking though. An alternative conspiracy theory is that the Titanic was secretly switched with her sister ship the Olympic (which suffered damage after an accident for which the insurers would not pay out on) and it was this ship which was deliberately sunk in a fraudulent insurance ploy.
