Titanic : a new thesis inflamed on its sinking – The Figaro

We thought all about the most famous maritime disaster in history. After thirty years of investigation, a journalist claims that the collision of the ship with an iceberg would not be at the origin of its damage.

In the night of 14 to 15 April, 1915, the RMS Titanic, deemed “unsinkable”, was sinking to peak after hitting an iceberg, in the heart of the North Atlantic. At its edge, 2500 passengers, of which 1491 perished in the sinking. Object of all the fascinations, the largest maritime disaster of the Twentieth century has been transcribed countless times on the screen, until the masterpiece of James Cameron, released in 1997.

It was thought the terms and conditions of this shipwreck to ever clarified, but more than one hundred years later, new twists come to renew the investigation. As reported in the british newspaper The Independent, the journalist Senan Moloney, in a documentary aired on Channel 4 the 31 December last year, claimed that a fire which occurred several days before the collision of the Titanic with the iceberg was the cause of the disaster.

These are photographs of the day, ignored by investigators, which might have allowed him to arrive at this surprising conclusion. On these, Senan Moloney would have highlighted the wide black marks about ten meters, to the front and to the right at the hull of the ship, that is to say, in the vicinity of the area where the clash between the liner and the iceberg.

“This fire was known to the crew, who decided to ignore it. The Titanic should never have been placed in the water.”

According to several experts interviewed by the journalist, who is conducting the investigation for the past thirty years, these marks would be proof of the existence of a fire in one of the fuel tanks located in the hold of the boat. Worse still, the fire would have triggered even before the launching of the ship, the shipyard in Belfast.

To Senan Moloney, this accident would explain the speed with which the boat would have sunk, once came into contact with the iceberg. Still according to him, J. Bruce Ismay, the president of the company that built the Titanic, would have strictly forbidden the ship’s crew to mention the existence of that fire to 2.500 passengers present on board.

In his documentary, Titanic: The New Evidence, he adds: “This shipwreck is not only the history of collusion between an iceberg and an ocean liner. It is the combination of extraordinary factors that have led to the disaster: fire, ice, and a criminal negligence.” And to conclude: “This fire was known to the crew, who decided to ignore it. The Titanic should never have been placed in the water.”