Fun_People Archive
10 Feb
Oliver Stone directs.

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 98 12:49:14 -0800
To: Fun_People
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Subject: Oliver Stone directs.

Forwarded-by: Nev Dull <nev@bostic.com>
Forwarded-by: Eric Hendrickson <ericdh@tiac.net>
From: "James Walley" <james.walley@sierra.com>

Ed Jankovsky <syrinx@goaway.primenet.com> wrote:
> And Oliver Stone will direct it proving that the original Titanic sinking
> was really a cover-up and never happened... the real Titanic is sitting in
> a warehouse somewhere..

Interestingly enough, there is actually such a rumor among ocean-liner fans.
Specifically, it concerns the R.M.S. Olympic (which never gets a mention in
"Titanic", probably because it would spoil the myth that the Titanic was
bigger and more spectacular than any ship of its time).

The Olympic was the first of three identical ships for the White Star Line.
The Titanic was the second, and was essentially an _exact_ copy of the
Olympic (the third ship, the Britannic, was commandeered by the Royal Navy
when WWI began, and was destroyed by a mine off the coast of Greece).  In
any event, the Olympic was involved in a collision with a Navy frigate and
had to spend some six weeks in drydock, right next to where the Titanic was
being readied for her maiden voyage.

One rumor has it that, because the Olympic's repairs were taking too long,
White Star simply switched the nameplates on the two ships, and sent the
just-completed Titanic off as the "Olympic" to carry on its schedule.  When
repairs to the Olympic were completed, according to this theory, it was sent
as the "Titanic" for its ill-fated "maiden" voyage.

What makes this theory intriguing is that the prior collision the Olympic
sustained opened a large hole in its side, right at the point where the
"Titanic" hit the iceberg.  Proponents of this theory claim that either
repairs weren't made correctly, or that the ship was structurally weakened
there such that the iceberg caused more damage than it should have.

So, according to that rumor, it was really the year-old Olympic that went
to the bottom that April night in 1912, while the Titanic, under a
pseudonym, continued sailing until she was scrapped in the late 1930s.

© 1998 Peter Langston