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June 18, 2018 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
58:21
Edition 350 - Titanic Mystery

British author John Hamer with his explosive findings on the sinking of the Titanic...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet.
By webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
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The subject on this edition is one that we've touched on before.
It is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of life on the sea.
The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 on the night of 14th into 15th April of that year.
Three-quarters of the people roughly on board that ship lost their lives in this tragedy.
And a lot of the mathematics of it and a lot of the facts of it, of course, have been recited many times.
There were 324 first-class passengers on board.
Around 200 survived.
277 second-class passengers, about 118 of them survived.
708 third-class passengers, 181 survived.
885 crew, 212 survived.
13 postmen and musicians on board.
None of those people survived.
And if you saw either movie, in fact, there have been a few movies about this, but you'll know that the band played on.
Captain Smith went down with the ship.
His body never recovered.
There were many stories, mysterious and heroic, from that fateful night.
And there's been a lot written.
We had the late Robin Gardner on this show about nine years ago talking about the Titanic case and his take on it.
This time, we're going to cross to the far north of England, to Home Firth, and talk to a man who has another take on it all.
His name John Hamer, who's written a book called The Titanic Hoax, and we're going to talk around that with him.
Fascinating material, perhaps, like JFK and Princess Diana and many of the big cases of history where people have died.
The full and definitive truth may never come out.
But we have the right to ask questions, don't we?
Thank you very much for all of your feedback with this show.
When you get in touch with me, by the way, if you want to send me an email, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
It's always valuable to me.
And keep those communications coming because they are, and I've said it before, the lifeblood of the unexplained and have been for so many years.
All right, let's go to the north of England now from my base in London and talk with John Hamer about the Titanic.
John, thank you very much for doing this.
Hi, thank you very much for inviting me.
Talk to me about you then, John.
What are you?
Historian, researcher, amateur sleuth?
Where do we put you?
Well, yeah, I guess a bit of all of those, but mainly historian.
My background is history, although I worked in the IT industry most of my life.
I was made redundant about 18 years ago and became sort of by default a historical researcher, if you like, and author.
And since then, I've done lots and lots of research, written books.
I speak, I'm a public speaker, I go around the country speaking, I do radio shows, podcasts, all the rest of it.
But my background really is my first ever book, I think that probably put it into perspective a little bit, was called The Falsification of History.
Because one of the things that I found out very early on in my research career was that a lot of what we're told by the mainstream, in fact, most of what we're told by the mainstream, is basically a pack of lies.
So that sort of set the scene for me to really start looking more deeply into lots of historical events and it sort of grew from there, really.
Of course, they do say that history is written by the victors, isn't it?
History is written by the winners, whether they've won world wars or whether they've succeeded economically.
That's the version you usually get.
What I'm doing is looking at the losers' stories, if you like, if you want to put it in that way.
But yeah, no, it's a very true.
It's a cliche, but it's very true.
Obviously, the powers that be want to maintain their status as the powers that be, and to do that, they have to tell lies.
And that's where my investigative research comes in.
Am I right in saying that we're going to be talking specifically about the Titanic?
And we'll get into why you're interested in that in just a moment.
That we accepted as a nation, as a world, we accepted the conventional story of what happened to the Titanic for many decades.
And it's only really since 70s, 80s that more deep questions were begun to be asked.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, this is the case with most historical incidents.
As you say, you know, it's a very, very important point.
History is written by the victors.
And, you know, unless there is another source of information from which you can determine the other point of view, then we're going to accept the mainstream point of view all the time.
And it's only with the advent of the internet that we've had that alternative place to actually search and research and do what it takes to actually find out the real truth.
Obviously, there were sources before the internet, but they were far more inaccessible.
You know, for example, archives in libraries and things like that.
I mean, a lot of the research that I did for the Titanic, I didn't get off the internet.
I actually went to things like newspaper archives, that kind of thing, because it's amazing how Much truth you can turn up in the original reports of any incident, any disaster.
The truth lies at the very beginning of it until they actually come up with the official story, and then everything somehow gets transcended and whitewashed into this fake narrative that they seem to produce.
Well, I'm not saying that 9-11 was a fake narrative.
I was at Ground Zero a couple of times reporting from there and actually broadcast the story of the unfolding events of 9-11 from London to the audience here.
And obviously, those events were shocking.
But I think you're right about that.
The initial accounts were somewhat at variance with the more condensed accounts, the more polished accounts that were put together later.
There were bits and pieces of the story.
There were little loose ends in there that were unfolding through, for example, the CNN footage and all the rest of it that were forgotten and have been forgotten over time.
So I get to point.
Probably because they contradicted what the official story came to be.
So therefore, they get airbrushed from history, if you like, but they still remain sometimes in the original reports, whether that be a verbal report or a written report.
You know, you can find little nuggets of stuff that confirm your later conclusions about what really happened.
It's easy to sweep anomalies out of the way.
I totally get what you're saying, and I'm completely on the same page with you there.
I have a great friend called Katie, and Katie is a retired radio producer.
She's still doing some work, but she worked at the BBC and BFBS and LBC and various places producing some very, very big names.
She now is utterly captivated by the story of the Titanic.
She's actually been on the Titanic cruise where, I mean, I find this somewhat macabre, but she did it.
You can jump off the boat into the sea there and, you know, connect with the people who perished there.
So she's completely captivated by the story.
What do you think it is all these years on, John, that is the allure of the Titanic story?
There'd be many disasters in history.
This one seems to captivate people like no other.
Yeah, I've actually been asked that question before, Howard, and I'll give the same answer because obviously it's the one I believe in.
But I think it's got an element of everything in it.
It's got, you know, rich and poor all dyed together.
It's got, you know, there are love stories involved in it.
It's just a big, it just contains everything that a good story needs to have to be saleable, if you like, and to be attractive to the general public.
It's just such a...
And it just fascinates people, the whole story.
But I think the problem with it is, is that, you know, the main, the actual story itself is not at all as it seems to be.
And I know that might sound crazy to people who are just coming across this information for the first time.
But trust me, the Titanic story is totally different to the one that you read in the papers, in books, see on the films.
It's not at all like that.
It was a complete, almost a complete fabrication.
Obviously, there was a ship called the Titanic.
Obviously, a great big liner sunk in 1912 in the Atlantic Ocean with a horrendous loss of life.
But other than that, once you said that, you've really said everything that's true about it because there is so, and obviously we're going to get into that.
I appreciate that, but it's just such a fascinating story.
I can't really put it any more than that.
Well, I totally agree as one who's been fascinated by it myself for most of my life.
And I think we at least have, although there's a lot of inaccuracy on the internet, at least we have a democratization of information these days.
Back in the day when people were first researching the Titanic and when they were recording what happened in the decades that succeeded the tragedy, that was an era when people tended to know their place in a way that they don't now, thankfully.
Very well put.
Yeah, I mean, that is actually a big part of it.
And the other element to it, of course, is that we don't have the mass media.
They didn't have the mass media then that we do now.
I mean, obviously there was no radio, TV, internet.
I mean, all they had was newspapers.
And it was so easy to cover up anything that needed covering up or to even fake things that needed faking to tell the story that they wanted to be told.
And, you know, it was very, very difficult for the ordinary guy in the street to actually hear anything different to the official story that had been concocted at the time.
Okay, we have an enormous story to tell then.
I think we should start telling it.
Now, what I didn't realize until this morning is, or didn't remember, is that there were actually three ships in this series.
They were similar.
There was the, was it the, there was the Britannic that was the last, the Titanic in the middle, and the Oceanic.
No, sorry, and the Olympic.
Yeah, that's absolutely correct.
And that is highly significant, you know, as the story goes on.
That is absolutely correct.
I mean, the ships were commissioned by a guy called J.P. Morgan, who was the head of several huge conglomerates at the time, multi-billionaire, one of the richest people in the world.
And he identified, as do all good entrepreneurs, another business opportunity.
And that business opportunity was taking immigrants across the Atlantic from England, from Britain to the States.
And he saw a massive gap in the market for, as well as taking the steerage passengers, the poor immigrants from Eastern Europe and almost all of the rest of the world.
But he saw an opportunity for taking, obviously, rich people as well in fantastic luxury.
And that's what he tried to do.
He wasn't about most of the other shipping companies at that time were concerned with speed.
Now, he decided he was going to concentrate on luxury, and that was a real radical departure from the sort of given thinking of the day.
So he decided to produce a class of liners that were the ultimate in Luxury.
And as you rightly said, he built a ship called the Olympic, and then he built an almost identical ship called the Titanic.
And finally, as you also pointed out, the Britannic.
Now, the Britannic doesn't enter into this story at all.
That was after the Titanic sinking, so they didn't really play any part in it.
But the relationship between RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic is highly significant.
Well, highly significant, as you may know, I think you do know.
I interviewed Robin Gardner, who sadly died last year, and I found he put a very compelling story, and he put in so many years of work into this story.
And he told me things that I'd never even considered.
But the relationship, as you say, between the Olympic and the Titanic is significant in that the conspiracy theories claim that these two ships were swapped over.
Yes, there were.
So, okay, well, let's unpick the story because the Olympic had a bit of a checkered history, didn't it, from the very beginning?
It had, for example, a captain who gave her some problems.
Yes, indeed.
Well, it was the same captain as it was Captain Smith of the Titanic.
He was captain of the Olympic, too, because don't forget the Olympic had only been in service for about 10 months when Titanic was launched.
So, you know, they were both very new ships, and he was the only, he wasn't the only captain, but he was the captain that spent most of the time on the Olympic.
There was one other guy called Captain Haddock, which is a lovely name for a sea captain.
I really love that.
Perfect name for a seafarer.
So there was Captain Haddock and Captain Smith, and they were the only two captains of the Olympic up to that point in time.
And then Captain Smith became the captain of the Titanic, and obviously, you know, that was that.
There was only one voyage, so there were no more Titanic captains.
But I think if we just, can we just backtrack slightly?
Because there is a little bit of research that I've done that is actually, it's different to Robin Gardner's.
Okay, Robin didn't pick up on this, and I don't know why particularly, whether he didn't believe it or whether he just didn't want to get involved in that side of it.
But one of the other things that I get involved in is the fake monetary system and the foundation of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Bank of England and all that good stuff.
And this actually ties into that, believe it or not.
Morgan, who owned the White Star Line, he was a big financier as well.
Obviously, his company still exists now, the JP Morgan Company.
People have probably heard that name.
So he was a well-known financier at that time, as well as having lots of fingers in lots of other pies.
Now, Morgan was also involved in the foundation of the Federal Reserve Bank in America.
And they had been fighting from about 1908 to about until 1910, there was a big, big campaign in America from the financial people to actually get the Federal Reserve Bank established in America.
Because up until that point in time, there was no central bank in America, or the central bank was the government.
Okay, what these men were trying to do, J.P. Morgan and his ilk, they were trying to usurp the creation of money from the US government and put it into private hands, which is what they actually succeeded in doing eventually.
But I'm getting there, honestly.
Part of what was going on in the background in the States at that time, during that period, from about 1908 to 1910-11, there was a group of people who were obviously fighting against the Federal Reserve Bank and its institution.
And there were four really prominent guys.
One of them was Charles Lindbergh, who was the father of the famous flyer, the spirit of St. Louis man.
It was his father.
He was an American congressman.
One of them was a guy called Isidore Strauss, who owned Macy's department store, plus other interests.
The other one was Benjamin Guggenheim, who was into mining and mining industries in a big way.
And these guys were all billionaires, by the way.
And the other one was John Jacob Astor IV, who was a very, very wealthy man in his own right.
Now, those four men were fighting the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Okay, so we'll come on to this a little bit further down the line in the story, but it's very important that we remember that at the moment.
Okay, that these four men were fighting Morgan.
They were his sworn enemies.
He hated the sight of them and vice versa.
And they were trying to prevent him from setting up the Federal Reserve Bank.
Okay, so then now if we come back to the other little thread in the story, if you like, the Olympic.
Yes, the Olympic was launched in 1911 and that was involved in three or four fairly major accidents, the worst one of which was it collided with a British naval cruiser off the coast of the Isle of Wight on its fourth voyage, I think it was.
And the damage was so severe, it was far more severe than they ever let on or expected it to be.
And the upshot of it was it had to spend about eight weeks out of service.
Now, that was really significant because Morgan had put a lot of money into this and it was actually losing money hand over fist.
And the White Starline actually ended up in a really precarious position.
He actually invested a lot of money into it and he was getting no returns at all.
And it was a really precarious situation for them.
So I believe at around that point, once they started cannibalising parts from the half-built Titanic to repair the Olympic, which is what they actually did, that an idea occurred to them.
And that idea, I believe, was to actually switch the identity of the ships, because one of the things that I didn't mention just then was the fact that there was a US sorry, a British Navy inquiry into the cause of the accident.
And even though most sources before and since, or at the time and since, recognised that it was actually the HMS Hawk, which was the name of the ship, that was at fault, or the crew of the HMS Hawk, the naval inquiry, quite unsurprisingly, found against the White Star line.
And so they not only had to pay for the damage To Olympic, they also had to pay for the damage to HMS Hawk as well.
Plus, of course, I guess there's reputational damage too.
If you're telling people that you are going to launch luxury cruise liners and they're going to be fast and they're going to be ready soon and they're going to be fantastic, you can't go having publicity like this.
Absolutely.
That's a very good point.
And of course, that was going to hit Morgan's back balance as well.
So it's a much more long and convoluted story than, you know, it would take too long to explain their entire background to it.
But just let me say that I think at that point or shortly thereafter, they realized that they were in serious trouble.
Okay, they had this ship.
I think what actually happened was that the keel was twisted on the ship.
And I think any seafaring person, any Navy person will tell you, if a keel is damaged to that extent, the ship's a goner, basically.
If it was a car, it would be a write-off.
Yes, there was no insurance because the accident was their fault.
They had to pay for the damages to Hawk as well.
And I think Morgan realised that that was it.
The Olympic was a goner.
His whole project was a goner.
He was going to lose many, many millions.
And in the days when millions was a lot of money, I know it is now, but in those days, you know, the ships were probably worth three, four million pounds each, which is about half a billion pounds each these days.
So it was a massive, massive financial blow.
So I think in conjunction with the fact that he had three or four enemies that he wanted to dispose of, and he also had a ship on his hands that was worthless, I think he took the decision to patch Olympic up, switch the identities with the Titanic, and rename the ships and sink Olympic as Titanic.
And I absolutely am 100% convinced from the years and years of research that I've done that that was exactly the case and that is what happened.
Of course, if he was alive now and you were saying that he would sue you for money that you haven't got and neither have I and you would have to come out with your evidence.
So he's not around now to sue you.
But what's your evidence?
Well, there's so much evidence.
I mean, there's almost too much to actually number really, because the whole thing was just, you know, I'll give you a few examples.
You know, if you go to Belfast, which I have been to Belfast as part of this research, and you speak to people in Belfast, it's what, you know, you could say it's circumstantial evidence this, but it's everybody, all the shipyard workers' families knew what had gone on, but they were sworn to secrecy.
They knew that if they dare breathe a word of it, that not only would they never get a job with White Star, with Holland and Wolf again, who was a chip shipyard that built it, but they'd never get a job anywhere at all, ever again, because that was how it worked in those days.
There are countless testimonies from families of people who were told that they mustn't say a word of what was going on.
I've even seen TV programmes where there've been phone-ins, people phoning in and saying, yeah, that's exactly what happened.
My great-granddad worked there and he was told that if he ever breathed a word what was going on behind those dot gates, that it would be the end of his life, basically.
I'm not saying they were going to kill him, but in terms of getting another job, because it was, in those days, if you were blacklisted, that was it, you couldn't get another job.
So that was one of the things.
Of course, some of these things go in the class of urban myth, but some things that we think are urban myths turn out to be true.
I mean, there was something that I thought was an urban myth, and that was that Hitler lived in Liverpool.
And indeed, Hitler did live in Liverpool for a while.
He did indeed, yes, he did.
So that's no urban myth.
His sister lived there.
I mean, we're digressing slightly, but Hitler's sister lived in Liverpool.
And, yeah, he went to visit her and stayed there a couple of years, I think.
Yep, he did.
But, you know, that's proving my point that some things that you think are urban myths are not.
And, of course, some things are passed down through the generations.
And we have to remember this point that we made at the beginning, John, that people knew their place.
And I listen, I go back, I'm from Liverpool, and I go back to my granddad and his father working on the docks in Liverpool.
And if the boss has told you to keep your gob shut, then that's a, for my American listeners, that's a slang word for mouth.
Then you did.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that was just one of the things.
Okay, another big issue is photographic evidence.
Despite what the people who try and debunk this story will tell you that the photographic evidence works in their favor, I can categorically state that the photographic evidence does work in favour of the switch theory and not the other way around.
Most photographs had no dates, of course.
And if surreptitious changes were being made alongside official ones, which is actually what was happening, then, you know, to me, that just speaks volumes.
There is no way to actually say that the photographs prove the other argument.
I absolutely believe that the photographic evidence, and there is absolutely stacks of it, believe me.
A couple of the things I think, again, having read a lot and having seen a lot on TV at various places about this, that's the extent of my knowledge.
A lot of this centers on, for example, the number of portholes that were different between the Titanic and the Olympic.
And then, of course, there was the propeller.
Yes.
Yeah, they're just two examples.
But there are things like pictures of it, of Titanic's hull with certain blemishes on it, certain scratch marks on it.
And then you see the picture, and there's a photograph of it as the Olympic, and also a photograph of it as the Titanic as well, with exactly the same markings on the hull.
There are lots and lots of anomalies and lots and lots of different things that have actually gone to prove that this story is actually as I tell it and not as the people who Tell the other story.
Tell it.
So the Titanic, the Olympic becomes the Titanic and is sent out to a watery group.
I mean, there's lots to talk about about that, but it's sent out to its fate in the Atlantic.
What happens to the other ship?
ship that remains?
Well, the ship that remains was the original Titanic, which was just a So, yeah, I mean, the Olympic became the Titanic.
But the Titanic that was under construction, what did that become?
That became the Olympic, I beg your pardon, I said it the wrong way around.
It was, you know, the Olympic became the Titanic and was sunk, and the Titanic, the half-built Titanic or the finalised Titanic became the Olympic, and that spent the rest of its life, as our Olympic, ferrying people up and down the Atlantic Ocean, as I say, for 25 years.
I mean, that's another bit of circumstantial evidence in effect, because it's known that the damage to the Olympic sustained in its sort of short years in service, you know, less than two years in service, there is no way it could have withstood the rigours of the Atlantic Ocean for 25 years, making, you know, dozens and dozens of crossings each year.
The superstructure was just absolutely, well, it was useless.
I mean, there is no way that it could have done 25 years' service.
I'd never thought of that.
If that was the case, and it's a pretty big stretch of the imagination to accept the full enormity of that, why would you bother fitting it out in the luxurious and opulent way that the Titanic, what we think was the Titanic, was fitted out?
Why would you bother doing that?
I don't understand the point you're making.
The point that I'm making is that the ship that we believe was the Titanic but wasn't was fitted out to a fabulously opulent standard.
If it was all going to the bottom of the ocean, why would you have done that?
You would have cut corners, wouldn't you?
Well, they did cut corners, but I mean, there is no option.
There was no option because, I mean, everyone knew, there was so much publicity for both the ships before they were launched.
Everyone knew what it was going to look like or what it should look like.
But, for example, it's an interesting point because it was supposed to have carpets in certain areas and it didn't.
Okay, so questions were asked about that.
So, you know, just little things like that.
But it's an interesting point that you make, but it wasn't actually finished to the total high standards that it should have been according to the original plans.
They did cut corners.
So if this was this big plot, what do you think was the plan?
And is the plan what we saw when that ship hit an iceberg?
You know, you couldn't plan that.
So what was the plan?
Well, again, we might be getting into the realms of fantasy here.
I actually don't know the answer to that question.
You know, as try as I might, I've tried to get to the bottom of it.
But my own little theory, again, is that there was no iceberg.
Okay, I don't believe there's an iceberg.
I believe that the ship was holed by something like an icebreaker or something of that level.
There are so many, many reports from both a crew, Titanic crew.
When we talk about Titanic, I'm talking about the ship that sank now, not the original Titanic.
On the voyage, they were shadowed by several black painted ships.
Now, nobody knows what that was.
Okay, I have my own theories about that, but again, it is only a theory, and I can't obviously corroborate it anyway other than to say it's just a gut feeling, knowing what I know about the way things work in the world.
There were at least two black ships shadowing Titanic throughout the entirety of its voyage.
There were people who said that at the collision with the so-called iceberg, that a ship passed within 20 feet of the starboard side of Titanic.
And there were all sorts of little stories that came out that some of the first class passengers told, obviously the survivors, about what the officers had said to them when the accident happened.
The senior civilian officer, Lytola, he said to a first-class lady and it was overheard by two other first-class passengers, don't worry, the Californian is on its way to pick us up.
And this was within minutes of the accident.
They've not even been in radio contact with anybody at this point in time.
And this is just one small example.
I mean, radio telegraphy was new then.
Yes, it was.
And it was the captain of the Californian that took the brunt of the blame for the disaster.
Now, here's a problem, though.
If there were black painted ships shadowing the Titanic, and maybe there was some kind of engineered collision, if that theory goes, then surely in the interests of common humanity, those ships would have been around and available to partake in the rescue.
Yes, you would think so, wouldn't you?
But there certainly weren't.
And there was even a report from a doctor, a medical doctor, who was on board another ship whose name just escapes me for the moment.
It was a Canadian ship, and he said that within half an hour of the disaster, the ship that he was on passed so close to the Titanic.
The Titanic had actually gone down at this point, by the way, that you could actually look down over the edge of the railings at people in the Titanic lifeboats.
And this was given into evidence.
You see, this is another area where information is turned into disinformation because this report from this guy who's called Dr. Quitzrau, I think his name was.
This went into the record, the official record at the American Inquiry.
But of course, it never gets publicized because it doesn't fit the official narrative.
So again, it's another anomaly.
And the one or two sparse examples that I'm giving you here are just really, if you pardon the pun, they're the tip of the iceberg.
There are so many, many anomalies.
I mean, like I say, I've been researching this stuff for years and I'm still finding little bits of things out even now.
But there are, you know, there's absolutely mountains of evidence to say that this was not what really happened or the official story was not what really happened.
But what about so many people recorded the iceberg?
I mean, in recent years, they've actually on television and various other places, academic people have traced the trajectory of that iceberg from where it carved off a bigger chunk of ice and, you know, its floating path and where it subsequently went after that.
Are you telling me that there was no iceberg at all?
Well, I believe not.
I mean, obviously there were icebergs around, but I don't believe the ship is an iceberg.
Not at all.
No.
So you think there might have been that iceberg in that area, but that iceberg is not responsible for what transpired?
It wasn't just a case of a lone iceberg.
I mean, they were in a massive ice field.
So it's absolutely a fact that there were lots and lots of icebergs around.
But this mythical, huge monster of an iceberg that the ship hit, I don't think there's any evidence for it at all.
Because, I mean, people said to me when I've made this broad statement before, people have said to me, yeah, but there were lots of eyewitnesses said that the ice cascaded all over the decks.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
What happened was when the incident happened, whatever you might put the incident down to, the ship's engines were immediately slammed into reverse.
Now, it was doing 20 knots at the time and slamming the engines into reverse.
Let's not forget that it was minus two degrees Celsius at the time.
The ship's decking, the wireless aerial was a massive thing stretched right across almost from the front to the back of the ship, huge rigging, lots and lots of deck buildings with ice on those deck buildings, slamming a ship into reverse going at that speed,
all the ice would have been dislodged and it would have just scattered across the decks, you know, and just created, you know, it could have created the image that, you know, they hit an iceberg and the ice had fallen over onto the ship.
But see, the other thing about that is that they say that the iceberg cascaded ice onto the ship, but how could it have done that?
I mean, the iceberg is pyramidal shaped.
So where it struck the ship, the iceberg would actually slope away from the ship.
It wouldn't overhang it.
And the other thing about the iceberg is, I've just remembered another interesting point, the two forward lifeboats were always slung out away from the deck.
So in other words, they weren't contained within the side of the ship.
They were slung out.
It was just a normal practice.
That's what ships did in those days.
The lifeboats were actually protruding over the edge.
It was in case of any sort of immediate emergency, like someone falling overboard, that kind of thing.
So that they didn't have to go through the whole process of putting the lifeboats onto the davits and winching it down.
It was already halfway there.
So it was a security precaution, if you like.
Now, those lifeboats were intact.
So if it had hit an iceberg, how come it didn't dislodge the lifeboats or at least move them?
Well, wasn't it because if they were forward, then wouldn't it have meant that what I understand, and I may well be wrong, and what do I know?
I've watched movies.
Didn't the ship hit the iceberg a glancing blow that wouldn't necessarily have caught it forward, but it would have caught it further back than forward?
No, well, yeah, it was a glancing blow, according to the official story, yes, but it was almost right at the front.
It wasn't exactly at the very back.
So those boats would have been back, but it would have caught the lifeboat.
The lifeboat would have been absolutely, I mean, it would have been mashed, wouldn't it, by that impact?
Yeah.
It would have been knocked off at the very least, yeah.
Yeah, and the other thing is about the actual gash in the ship, according to the official story.
You know, it was very strange, the damage to the ship.
The steel plates had a 15 centimetre wide puncture.
Okay, 15 centimeters, what's that?
It's about six inches.
I think it's, yeah, it's not quite a foot.
I think it's eight or ten inches, something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's quite narrow anyway when you compare it to the hull of a ship.
Okay, and that was, so it was 15 centimeter wide, but it penetrated 1.6 meters into the inner skin of the ship.
Now, that would be a remarkably strange piece of ice that could be that shape and yet not be, you know, there must have been a really strange edge to the iceberg for it to be able to do that, if you understand what I'm saying.
You know, just visualise that.
A 1.6 meter, well, that's, you know, it's five foot something, isn't it?
So if it penetrates at five foot in and yet it was only six, eight inches wide, that's a rather strange ice protuberance.
Well, you know, science is not my big thing, but there are theories about when something has force and velocity behind it, even things that you wouldn't think would be able to penetrate do.
I mean, I once saw a demonstration of somebody being able to throw a pin, I think it was, or a nail, through a piece of glass because of the force at which it was ejected.
Right.
But again, I don't know whether that's the case in this instance, but it's a question that needs to be asked.
One thing, though, that would militate against all of this is, of course, there was a full board of inquiry about this.
There was a full investigation for the world's media to be involved in and see and report.
It would appear to me that, you know, minor members of the crew who survived and went through this, you know, surely somebody at the board of inquiry would have given some indication as to the story that we've been fed perhaps not being the real story.
In other words, they're not being the iceberg or the iceberg at least not being responsible.
Okay, could I?
Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.
Well, all I would suggest to You and the listeners to do is to dig out, and they're all on the internet in totality, dig out the transcripts from the US inquiry and from the British Inquiry and see if you agree with what I say about it being a whitewash because it was the both inquiries were a total whitewash.
The guy, Fred Fleet, who was the lookout at the time when the incident happened, he was absolutely, he'd obviously been coached to say what they wanted him to say, and he was coached very, very badly indeed because he made a complete mess of his evidence.
The whole thing is just ridiculous.
And when you read the transcripts of the inquiries, it certainly left me scratching my head.
Where did he fall down?
Where did he fall down?
Where did he want me to start?
I mean, the whole thing, it just came across as a complete imbecile because he'd obviously been told to say something that wasn't true, but he couldn't cope with it.
It was just a simple Liverpool lad he was.
You know, probably a very nice guy, I don't know.
But it was just completely tongue-tied and he ended up becoming very intransigent.
You know, people who cannot express themselves that well, he wasn't very well educated, obviously.
He was just a young guy, early 20s.
And he'd obviously been told to say something that he didn't want to say that wasn't true.
And as a result, it became very flustered.
And he began to sort of, you know, get abusive.
And the whole thing was just, it's a complete farce.
Obviously, I can't do justice to that on a cast like this, but I would certainly encourage the listeners to look up the transcript of the inquiries, both inquiries.
When you went to Belfast.
Sorry, you were saying.
Sorry?
What were you saying?
I just said, yeah, both inquiries weren't identical, but they came to different conclusions in lots of aspects.
So, you know, what does that tell you for a start?
When you went to Belfast, John, talk to me about the people you spoke with and the sorts of things they told you.
Well, it was very consistent.
That's what struck me.
It wasn't one person saying one thing and another person saying, you know, something that wasn't quite right.
They just said that their relatives had been told in no uncertain terms that if what was going on in the shipyard was for their eyes only and their ears only, and if it ever got outside the shipyard, then basically they would be held to pay.
And they were told in no uncertain terms that their jobs are at risk.
And so were the jobs of their family as well, because in those days, whole families worked in the same big employer, in this case, Harland and Wolf Shipyard.
So they were all told that.
One lady said to me that I can't do an Irish accent, so I won't even attempt it, but she said that her great-granddaddy, she called him, my great-granddaddy told us as we kids that, you know, if ever anything was breathed outside those dock gates, then you'd never be allowed back in them and you'd never work again.
The gist of what he said.
Okay, so if there was this plot, then I can't imagine that anybody would deliberately conspire to kill so many people.
So presumably aspects of it, and you tell me what you think, backfired.
Well, I don't believe they meant to kill.
I certainly believe they meant to kill Astergug and Iron Strikes, but I don't think they meant to kill anybody else.
I think that the plot failed, if you like.
This is not specifically a plug from a bug, but it's a lot easier to read the story than it is to actually tell it in sort of bits and pieces like this.
But what I believed happened was I think Californian, the ship that was meant to rescue them, obviously it miscarried.
The message miscarried.
They weren't in the right position.
The Titanic reported its position wrongly for a start.
It was actually 19 miles away further than what they said they were.
Whether that was as a result of the panic after the event, whether it was the wireless operators that sent the wrong coordinates, or whether it was the officer that gave the wireless operator the wrong coordinates for the distress signals.
But the Californian was actually parked about 19 miles away.
Sorry, not 19 miles away.
Titanic was in a 19 mile different position to what the Californian was expecting it to be.
Now, this is a very strange situation with the Californian as well, because that was shut up for the night and it was drifting with the ice.
And when that came out at the inquiry, sorry, at the American inquiry, they said that that was common practice for ships to sit in an ice field overnight and wait for daylight.
But in the British inquiry, that came out, that was absolutely not true.
That was not common practice at all.
What the practice was, was to continue at normal speeds because as long as it wasn't foggy and the visibility was good, you know, reasonably good, icebergs are very, very visible.
And the speed that ships travel at, it wasn't that great a speed in those days.
And it was quite easy to avoid icebergs as long as you had a lookout and he was watching for the icebergs and relaying the information to the bridge, which is what obviously was going to happen.
That was common practice.
So you just carried on at full speed through the iceberg.
That's what Titanic was doing at the time as well.
And this has always been leveled as a criticism at Smith.
Now, there's a lot, Captain Smith, there's a lot of things you can level at Smith as a criticism, but that wasn't one of them.
It's actually untrue to say that you have to slow down or stop just because you're in an ice field.
That didn't happen.
So why was Californian sat there drifting With the ice, if it wasn't waiting for Titanic, if it wasn't a predetermined rendezvous.
And the other thing about the Californian, while we're on that topic, is that Californian was going to Boston.
It was traveling from London to Boston, and it left about five days before Titanic, and it sat there and waited for them, and it had no cargo at all, except for 3,000 blankets and 3,000 woolen sweaters, and that's all it carried.
I've never heard that before.
And this is documented.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's documented.
So you think, if we add into the theory, that it was actually there waiting, and it had the equipment to do a rescue when that became necessary?
Absolutely.
It had no passengers and no cargo other than that.
And the other interesting point is that at the time of Titanic's maiden voyage and obviously Californians leaving Britain, there was a massive coal strike on.
Not a lot of people know this, actually, but there was a massive coal strike and hardly any ships were leaving England at the time.
So what on earth was Californian doing?
Setting off with just that strange cargo and no passengers when coal was like gold dust to obtain at the time.
And waiting in position where it was.
And waiting in position, yeah.
Well, listen, those points I've never heard before, so they're definitely food for thought.
I mean, there are, as you say, there are many, many things that don't add up.
One of the things I read today was that the Titanic wreck was discovered by some French diver, and apparently it had a grey undercoat, but the undercoat of paint the Titanic had was black.
That's absolutely correct.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, there's something else that I hadn't heard.
Something else that I hadn't heard until today, and this was from your research, I think, that 25 prominent people, I think, who were due to be on board that ship cancelled beforehand.
Yeah, I think it's actually more than that.
I think it was 50.
They were all friends or business associates of JPMorgan.
J.P. Morgan actually was due to sail, but he cancelled half an hour before the ship sailed.
Well, you know, that may just be coincidence.
And if it was a court of law, I don't know whether that would stand up as any kind of proof.
But as you say, there are lots of things that ought to be questioned here.
Yeah, I mean, circumstantial evidence.
I mean, there is so much circumstantial evidence, and courts of law do operate on circumstantial evidence, especially when it's overwhelming.
And there's a catalogue of failings here.
One of the things I'm reading right now is that the sea trial, you know, sea trials are very important for ships as to iron out problems, verify they can do what the specs say they can do, see if there's anything dangerous going on.
Titanic sea trial was just a couple of hours on Belfast Loch.
It didn't do speed tests and it didn't do lifeboat tests.
It was a real rush job.
Correct.
Correct.
I mean, you know, the sea trials had to be conducted in the open sea and they were.
Belfast Loch is an inland sea, isn't it?
I mean, you know, you never get any rough weather on there.
It should have been taken out into at least into the Irish Sea and possibly into the Atlantic, but it didn't.
I mean, like you say, it was just a two-hour jaunt down Belfast Loch and then back in time for lunch chaps, you know, one of those.
And also, what I'm reading here, too, I'm just reading some notes about your book here.
JP Morgan, who's at the center of all of this, was a shareholder, apparently, in the company that owned the Californian.
Yes.
Yeah.
Which again may be perfectly innocuous.
I mean, that may be perfectly innocuous, but it's an interesting point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But the other thing about the Californian was that Captain Lord, who was the captain, he actually became the scapegoat, I believe that he was chosen for that role because about 10 years earlier, he conducted an exercise and he managed to get 3,000 people off a ship onto another ship at sea as part of an exercise in under an hour.
And so I think that, you know, that sort of gave him the edge when they were choosing the guy who was going to carry out the rescue.
So here's a qualified man.
He's very good at this kind of thing.
He's stationary in pole position for anything that might happen.
And the ship has got lots of rescue equipment, 3,000 blankets on board.
Absolutely.
Well, these are things that I hadn't contemplated until now.
It's an astonishing story.
Now, look, has anybody, in the years since the book was published, and while you've been doing this research, there are still many people who are current day relatives of people who perished in that terrible tragedy.
Have any of those people ever got in touch with you?
Yes.
I spoke to a guy, oh goodness me, his name's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember what it was now.
Valentine Palmer, who was the great nephew of Leitola, the senior surviving officer.
And Leitola, of course, was the man played in the original movie by Kenneth Moore, who was a big hero.
Correct.
Yeah.
Well, this guy's great-nephew, Valentine Palmer, he spoke to me, he emailed me and said, would you like a chat?
And I said, yes, I would.
That would be very interesting.
This is while I was writing the book, actually.
And so we had a lovely chat.
I spoke, must have spoken for about an hour and a half.
Lovely, lovely man.
And he agreed with every single word that I said.
He said, his great-uncle, he only knew him, he died when he was a teenager.
He died when Valentine was a teenager.
He said, but from everything I knew about my great-uncle and what he told us about the incident, which wasn't very much, admittedly, he said, I can absolutely believe what you're saying about this total cover-up.
And he even had one or two little bits and pieces to tell me, which I've got written down somewhere, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.
But yeah, the whole thing was just corroborated by what he told me.
It was just, we had a fascinating conversation.
At the beginning of our conversation, John, I told you about my friend Katie, who is captivated almost to the point of being mildly obsessed with the Titanic.
She goes to Liverpool a lot and does research there, has been to various places all over the UK.
I mean, she's semi-retired now and has the time to do it.
But the way that she puts it, and I can perfectly believe it, once this story gets you, you can't let it go.
Does that fit you?
Yeah, definitely.
Absolutely.
I mean, it started off as just a, oh, that's interesting.
I wonder, if I follow this up, I wonder where it will take me.
But yeah, I mean, it sort of took over my life for many years.
You know, just there is so much information to disseminate and to pick over and to, you know, it's all in my book.
I mean, again, I'm not trying to necessarily plug my book, but RMS Olympic is, you know, it's all in there.
I mean, it's far, far more comprehensive than this conversation we're having and we've just had.
You know, it's quite difficult to do it justice in a sort of an hour's quant question and answer some.
Well, I think you've done pretty well.
But one of the things that the late and great Robin Gardner told me when I spoke with him in 2009, and again, I hadn't thought about this, was that there were ways that the Titanic could have been saved.
For example, it was common practice dating back to the days of sail that even in those days, ships that had other forms of power took sails with them.
And the Titanic had a sail that could have been rolled down the side of the ship to cover the gash.
Absolutely.
Yeah, indeed.
That was common practice.
You know, going back to the old wooden ships, they used to do that.
You know, especially in battles, if a ship got hold, they would take a piece of sail and they would wrap it all the way around the hole from the deck rail on one side all the way underneath.
They would get a volunteer to swim underneath with it and take it right around to the other side.
And of course, the water pressure then would push the sail against the hole and prevent more water from passing through.
But Captain Smith did not order that.
No, whether it was practical on the Titanic, I couldn't really answer that question.
And something else you told me, I didn't realise or didn't remember that Captain Smith was in command of the Olympic when the Olympic went through her various travails.
Why would you put somebody who might have been in need of what these days on the roads in the UK we call a speed awareness course?
Why would you put somebody who might need a little retraining in charge immediately of the Titanic?
Yeah, it's a very interesting question.
I don't have the answer to it, but I've pondered on that long and hard.
I mean, it wasn't just the Olympic that Smith had accidents with.
Throughout his entire career, I don't know.
He must have had some incriminating photographs of J.P. Morgan is all I can think of, because his entire career, he should have been fired.
I mean, some of the things that he did, they were just ridiculous.
I've listed them all in the book, but lots and lots of stuff.
And yet you choose that man to be in charge of what you're telling the world is an unsinkable ship that will break records.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Crazy.
Well, you know, I think you're right.
We're leaving more questions open.
Are you continuing to research this or have you put it to one side for now?
What's going on?
It's on a back burner at the moment.
I mean, I do occasionally.
People send me things.
That's probably the only bit of sort of new research that I do.
People send me things.
So I look into it then and I either add it into the mix or reject it, depending on what it is.
And what's the most interesting thing you've been sent recently?
Last year, a gentleman in Italy, Marco Nassera, if you're listening, Marco, he sent me a piece of information that it was from, I can't remember it was a relative or a friend of the family, whose grandfather had been on the ship.
Now, his grandfather survived.
He was one of the few third-class passengers to survive.
And he had a very interesting story about the ship immediately at the point of impact, after the iceberg, everybody came on deck, or the so-called iceberg.
He stated that he saw this black ship with a yellow band around the funnel, and it was called the yellow funnel steamer after that, and that's what it was christened.
Immediately, and it was there at the side of the ship as the incident, or in the very, very short aftermath after the incident, this yellow funnel steamer was sat there.
And this guy, when he got back home, because he was actually emigrating to America, but it was so traumatized that he actually went back home again afterwards on another ship.
So he didn't stay in America.
When he got back home, he contacted the American embassy, contacted the British Embassy in Rome, and he told them his story.
And they dutifully copied it all down.
They took it all, took his story down, and then, of course, he never heard from them again.
But he was one of the main sort of witnesses to the black ships, if you like.
Well, how astonishing then.
So you've got somebody who stands up that story.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, John, this is a continuing fascination for both of us and for my friend Katie.
Good luck with any more research that you do.
And I think we coped with the digital connection that has a slight delay on it.
If people want to read about you and your work, I don't know whether you do.
Do you have a website?
I do have a website.
It's called falsificationofhistory.co.uk.
Well, if you want to talk with me about any of the other cases you've looked into, you know, I've got a radio show and a podcast.
We can always do that, John.
Thank you for doing this.
Thank you, Howard.
It's been a pleasure.
John Hamer, and I'll put a link to him and his work on my website, theunexplained.tv, designed and created by Adam from Creative Hotspot in Liverpool, who always does such great work for us here.
Thank you very much for being in touch.
Please stay in touch.
Need to get your emails in.
Go to the website, tell me what you think of the show and all that stuff.
More great guests coming soon.
And until that time, my name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London.
This has been The Unexplained.
And please stay safe, stay calm.
And above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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