LONDON: The tragic sinking of RMS Titanic was caused by a fire in the liner’s boiler room not simply a collision with a giant iceberg, a new documentary claimed.
Since the Titanic went down in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, historians have long pinned the blame solely on her striking an iceberg.
But journalist Senan Molony, who has been researching the disaster for 30 years, believes that a fire in a coalbunker caused serious damage to the Titanic’s hull – in the same area where the iceberg later hit - and is the real reason for the disaster.
Molony suggests, in the documentary Titanic: The New Evidence, that the fire had been raging since she left the shipyard in Belfast, meaning those in charge could be criminally negligent.
He says the 1,000C temperatures weakened the hull so much that when the Titanic collided with an iceberg what could have been a minor knock became an unimaginable disaster.
More than 1,500 people died when the ship sank under command of Captain Edward Smith.
Molony said, “The official Titanic inquiry branded it as an act of God. This isn’t a simple story of colliding with an iceberg and sinking. It’s a perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together: fire, ice and criminal negligence.”
WHO WERE ON BOARD: Along with 2,224 passengers and crew, ship carried some of the wealthiest people in the world were on board, including property tycoon John Jacob Astor IV, great grandson of John Jacob Astor, founder of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim, heir to his family's mining business, also perished, along with Isidor Straus, the German-born co-owner of Macy's department store.
ABOUT TITANIC: The ship was the largest afloat at the time and was designed in such a way that it was meant to be 'unsinkable'. It had an on-board gym, libraries, swimming pool and several restaurants and luxury first class cabins. There were not enough lifeboats on board for all the passengers due to out-of-date maritime safety regulations.
SOME OTHER FACTS
The first Titanic movie was made less than a month after the disaster and featured an actress that survived the sinking.
Out of 12 dogs that were on board, three survived.
It took 73 years to find the Titanic's wreckage.
The iceberg that the Titanic collided with started its journey nearly 2,000 years ago.
None of the 30 engineers on board survived.They stayed behind to keep the power on for as long as possible so that others could escape.
The most expensive rooms on the ship would cost over $100,000 today.
The only Japanese man to survive the Titanic was ostracised and labeled a coward for not dying with other passengers.
It took the Titanic 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink.
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