The True Story of Titanic

By Meer Saleem

         Could the Titanic have been the most ingenious assassination in history?

As youngsters, we’re all told the infamous story of the Titanic, the supposedly indestructible ship that sunk on its maiden voyage.

We’re all familiar with the story: the ship left Southampton, England, headed for New York City on April 10, 1912. Four days into the voyage, at 11:40pm on April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank at 2:20am, “resulting in the deaths of 1,517 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history."

Bad luck, we’re all led to believe. No one saw the iceberg and so the infallible ship sank. Bummer…

But few of us ever think that through. Forget, for a moment, the story we’re all fed. Does it make sense? The point is that just because we’re told a story when we’re young, doesn’t mean we should simply accept it as absolute truth.

Let’s take a look at some of the facts surrounding the sinking of the Titanic:

1. The unsinkable Titanic sunk…on its maiden voyage. How could this unsinkable ship sink? On its first trip, no less! That alone is quite remarkable/intriguing.

2. “Captain E.J. Smith ignored multiple iceberg warnings from his crew and other ships.” Getting from England to New York as fast as possible was goal number one, at the behest of his boss, Joseph Bruce Ismay, Managing Director of the White Star Line. Ismay had pressure from his boss, J.P. Morgan, owner of White Star Line. By the way, Ismay survived the catastrophe.

3. Speaking of J.P. Morgan, he had his very own private suite and promenade deck on the Titanic. He was supposed to be on that fateful maiden voyage but canceled passage. Coincidence or part of Morgan’s plan?

4. Once the Titanic struck the iceberg, the captain and his crew used white flares to signal distress. Unfortunately, white flares are not the color used to signal distress; red flares are always used to show distress. So the closest ship, the Californian, ignored the flares, assuming it was a celebratory signal, rather than an emergency. Oops…

5. “All ships must carry sufficient lifeboats for the number of passengers on board. The Titanic did not.”

6. “About three million rivets were used to hold the sections of the Titanic together. Some rivets have been recovered from the wreck and analysed. The findings show that they were made of sub-standard iron. When the ship hit the iceberg, the force of the impact caused the heads of the rivets to break and the sections of the Titanic to come apart. If quality iron rivets had been used, the ship may not have sunk.”

7. “The belief that the ship was unsinkable was, in part, due to the fact that the Titanic had sixteen watertight compartments. However, the compartments did not reach as high as they should have. White Star Line did not want them to go all the way up because this would have reduced living space in first class.”

8. Killed on the sinking ship — along with 1,514 other people — were Benjamin Guggenheim, Isa Strauss and John Jacob Astor. Astor was, at the time, believed to be the wealthiest man on the planet. Guggenheim and Strauss weren’t far behind Astor. And these three powerful men opposed the Federal Reserve.

An angry JP Morgan yelling at photographers. He hated having his picture taken. As an aside to the above facts, let’s take a look at an additional dimension to the dynamic between J.P. Morgan and John Jacob Astor. Both Morgan and Astor invested large sums of money in the brilliance of Nikola Tesla, a genius inventor who gained notoriety during the late 19th/early 20th century. Morgan’s primary concern with Tesla was making money. Astor and Tesla, however, were good friends.

“Col. John Jacob Astor, owner of the Waldorf-Astoria, held his famous dining-room guest [Tesla] in the highest esteem as a personal friend, and kept in close touch with the progress of his investigations. When he heard that his researches were being halted through lack of funds, he made available to Tesla the $30,000 he needed in order to take advantage of Curtis’ offer and build a temporary plant at Colorado Springs.”

So what was the big deal about Tesla? Well, “Tesla had claimed to be able to send electrical energy without wires before the turn of the century, and he envisioned people all around the globe sticking rods into the earth to extract that energy — free …. After Tesla admitted to financier J.P. Morgan that an experimental tower on Long Island was meant to send power as well as message, his public career ended …. Corporate moguls who were interested in creating monopolies and metering electrical power blackballed him.”

Now let’s take a look at a few of the above facts that, when taken together, may paint quite a different picture of the tragedy of the Titanic:

1. J.P. Morgan owned White Star Line ships. J.P. Morgan was also the main conspirator behind the creation of the Federal reserve banking system. He was supposed to be on the ship but canceled at the last moment.

2. John Jacob Astor, along with Benjamin Guggenheim and Isa Strauss, were three very wealthy and powerful men, all of whom were vehemently against the creation of the Federal Reserve, and were quite outspoken on the matter. Morgan viewed Astor and Co. as a huge obstacle. These three men died when the Titanic — a ship built by J.P. Morgan’s White Star Line — hit that infamous iceberg and sank.

3. J.P. Morgan and John Jacob Astor both funded Nikola Tesla, who created a way to generate an infinite amount of electrical energy. Tesla planned to allow people to access that energy for free, but Morgan squashed Tesla because he wanted to profit from energy, not give it away. Astor, Tesla’s good friend, seemed to have deep pockets for Tesla. Not good for Morgan.

4. Once Astor, Guggenheim and Strauss were dead, there was no more public outcry against the Federal Reserve. It passed congress and was signed into law the following year on December 23, 1913. In addition, now Tesla’s funding was wiped away, his friend in Astor gone.

You must admit, all of this is extremely interesting. Could Morgan have created this plot to kill off his biggest opponents? Did Morgan “whack” Astor because he was getting in his way on too many wealth and power-generating projects?

Is it just a coincidence that J.P. Morgan owned White Star Line, the company that produced the supposedly unsinkable Titanic, and that it went down with his enemy, John Jacob Astor, as well as Federal Reserve opposers Guggenheim and Strauss?

And is it merely coincidence that Morgan and Astor both funded Nikola Tesla, whose innovations could have been either the greatest gifts to mankind or the greatest wealth generators for the few, depending upon who controlled them?