The Worst Idea Of All Time - Did Titanic Sink? 04: She Was Not Alone

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

Over 1500 souls perished the night the ship calling itself "Titanic" sank. But could they have been rescued?With the fellas hard at work on the next chapter of TWIOAT, we present the first season of Did Titanic Sink?, the award-winning pod series from the Worst Idea Extended Universe. Join Tim Batt and Carlo Ritchie on their maiden voyage into the unknown.Enjoying DTS? Season two is releasing now on RNZ! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is an online podcast brought to you by Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa. Hey, welcome to the fourth episode of a podcast series that's exploring twin mysteries. The first, did Titanic sink? The second, has my friend Carlo Ritchie, who thinks it didn't, lost his mind? To his credit, Carlo's introduced a lot of compelling evidence so far, and he's talked me through the motive and the means for how this Titanic conspiracy theory works, but now I want to drill into the opportunity. In the last episode, Carlo introduced this huge fire that was apparently raging in the coal bunker of Titanic for three weeks, and he believes it was lit on purpose.

weeks and he believes it was lit on purpose. According to Carlo this was the plan light a big fire and then slowly and safely sink the Titanic to the bottom of the ocean and claim your insurance payout. Except the thing that got in the way was the big iceberg. Now if this is the case I don't know how you're supposed to get 2,200 people off a burning passenger ship safely but Carlo did mention this. I don't think they intended to kill all these people, Tim. They wanted this ship to sink slowly, with plenty of time for nearby ships to come to the rescue. In fact, I believe there were some ships that were actually waiting for this event to happen in order to rescue the passengers.

Are you ready to go back to Titanic? Hope so, because I'm Tim, he's Carlo, and this is Did Titanic Sink? Hey Carlo. Hello Tim, that was a very nice intro. Oh thanks, I forgot you were here. Yeah, I was just being polite. Well I appreciate it. Okay, I've got a big burning question to kick off.

If Titanic was supposed to sink slower do you think everyone could have been saved the answer is actually way simpler than you might think tim oh thank god but before i get to that you son of a bitch i just want to say thanks for hearing me out oh sorry you're welcome now the simple answer is yes the titanic survivors were rescued by a ship called the RMS Carpathia, who arrived on the scene about two hours after Titanic sank. Now, if Titanic had managed to stay afloat until then, way more people would have been saved.

So two hours, that's about all we need to see more lives saved, in this case. What's also good to mention at this point is Titanic didn't actually know where they were. Because at night time in 1912, if you're on a ship, you're pretty much just guessing where you were. Yeah, right. I mean, we're at kind of just after the turn of the century. Obviously, GPS isn't a thing yet.

Is everyone still navigating with the stars and the sun and stuff? It's mostly the sun, yes. They are using the stars to some degree, but it's mostly the sun. So at night, they calculate their position by this thing called dead reckoning and dead reckoning works in that you work out when the last time you saw the sun was you know where that position was and then you just work out how long you've been traveling in what general direction and that's where you think you should be how accurate was this method it seems pretty janky it's pretty accurate it's it's not exactly accurate but it does give you a fairly good indication of where you were now hence dead reckoning hence dead reckoning

yes the titanic's position was calculated by a guy named fourth officer boxhall man that is crazy foresight that his parents gave him that first name yeah yeah it really worked out for him in the end it was hard when he was fifth officer and sixth officer. Yeah, I'll bet. But eventually- As soon as he got that promotion, he was like, born to do it, baby. Yeah, he's peaked. You don't want to get him promoted after that.

Absolutely not. Captain, fourth officer. It doesn't work. It doesn't work, no. So he was the guy who was in charge of calculating where Titanic was. Right. And he was wrong. And he knew that he was probably wrong.

How wrong was he? The first position that he gave was about, I think, eight miles off the position or 10 miles off, something like that. That seems not that wrong for me in the scheme of things when you're floating around the North Atlantic at night. Sure, but if you've got passengers in lifeboats who are floating out there waiting for rescue, that's about an hour in terms of how long it will take a ship to find you

because these ships have an average speed of about 12 miles an hour. Right. So he knows he's wrong, so he keeps trying to work it out. He does it a second time and corrects the Titanic's position, and this time he's a little bit closer. He's still off by, I think, again, a factor of about five miles. And this is all happening while he's doing communications on the ship, sending out these distress signals? He's not responsible for the distress signals.

He's writing these positions down, giving them to the radio operators, and the radio operators are sending it out. But this is while Titanic is sinking? Yes, he's doing it under the pressure of this ship is going to sink, and if he doesn't get the position right, rescue ships aren't going to be able to find them. And that's why in the early morning, he just gets up on the front of his lifeboat and just starts holding these green flares up into the sky, desperately hoping that another ship will see him and be able to actually find the Titanic's passengers. Because he knows that even though he might be kind of right,

he's also likely to be a little bit off. Yeah, and that's what ultimately saves all the Titanic's passengers because the Carpathia, the ship that comes to rescue them, it goes to the wrong spot, and then they see this tiny green light, and they steer towards it, and that leads them to finding the rest of these lifeboats. God bless you, Mr. Fourth Officer.

Yeah, he's a pretty interesting guy, actually. He actually, you can listen to if you really want, he recorded about, I think, 40 can listen to if you really want, he recorded about I think 40 years or 50 years after the disaster, he recorded a testimony of his experience on the night that the Titanic sank. I went on watch at eight o'clock on that Sunday night, the 14th of April. It's pretty harrowing stuff but he had this incredible recollection for the night. When the iceberg was reported from the crow's nest, when they stuck the bells,

I was sitting in my cabin having a cup of tea and immediately got up and walked along to the bridge. He just describes the sounds that he heard. As I came up through the top lounge where the band was, they were playing Alexander's Ragtime Band. He has quite a beautiful voice by the time that he's recording this. And I think he was from Liverpool or something. So you just have this old man telling you

about this incredibly harrowing experience in his early 20s well I put the amended position down on the desk and I said now send that amended position do you understand he said yes well I said send that off right away and that was the position that the Carpathia came to. And I worked on the boat covers, taking off the boat covers on the boat deck when I heard the crow's nest report a light on the starboard bow. Well, I went on the bridge right away. I found this light with my own glasses, but I wanted the telescope to define what it was,

and I realised then that it was two mouse headlights of a steamer below the horizon. It's like Thomas the Tank Engine, but super depressing. Anyway, I won't want to dwell on Fourth Officer Boxall too much. That's where you draw the line on your little tangents?

Well, we can go into his, you know, like his life. No, no, you're right. You're actually right. Your instincts were correct. Okay, the Carpathia. Yeah, we can go into his, you know, like his life. No, no, you're right. You're actually right. Your instincts were correct. Okay, the Carpathia. Yeah, anyway, the thing is, if they'd had two extra hours afloat,

that would have got the Carpathia to them. It would have also got some of the other ships who were around them. And this is where I want to introduce you to a host of very interesting characters, Tim. And the first is the SS Californian. Again, is this a guy with a crazy name or an actual ship? This is a ship. Okay. first is the SS Californian. Again, is this a guy with a crazy name or an actual ship? This is

a ship. This is the ship that they think may have watched the Titanic sink. What do you mean? There's evidence from passengers on board the Titanic and from officers on board the Titanic, as well as evidence from people on the Californian that they watched each other in those

final hours and the Californian didn't come to help. Oh my God. A ship definitely watched the Titanic sink. Its identity, though, is really heavily shrouded in mystery, and we'll come to that. So the Titanic hits the iceberg at 11.40. An hour earlier, at 10.30,

the SS Californian is stopped, completely surrounded by ice. So they send a message to Titanic warning them of the imminent danger that Titanic is sailing towards. This is what they hear. Keep out. Shut up. Shut up. I'm working Cape Race. Titanic to Cape Race. Sorry. Please repeat. Jammed. Whoa, that's pretty freaky. So Titanic's telling everyone to shut up. Who's Cape Race? Freaky. So Titanic's telling everyone to shut up. Who's Cape Race? Cape Race is a Marconi transmitting station, which is in Canada. Now, Marconi's, just to take a second,

Marconi is the guy who builds these machines that send Morse code between ships, right? Like big radio transmitters. Yeah, it's these, you might have heard, like telegraphs, right? Gotcha. So Marconi creates these Marconi machines. The original Wi-Fi. Yeah, it's actually a bit like the original Twitter because anyone can hear you. If you're sending out a Marconigram,

anyone who's within range of you can hear you. And what happens here is Titanic's radio operator, Jack Phillips, he's sending out a huge backlog of messages that he has from Titanic's passengers. He has about 250 messages that he's desperately trying to work through He has about 250 messages that he's desperately trying to work through. At the same time, he's also getting messages back from Cape Race to passengers on board the Titanic. Right. So back in the day, in the 1910s,

if you're on a passenger ship, you can still communicate with the rest of the outside world via these, what are they called? Maconograms? Maconograms. Yeah. This is one of the big luxury things that Titanic has, right? So if you want, you can pay a certain fee. I think it's about $50 New Zealand to send a message. And you can write that message, give it to one of these Marconi operators, and they'll send it off to the mainland and it'll get there. And what kind of things are people sending through these Marconigrams?

They're all kind of salacious in some ways. Some of them are very perfunctory, like trying to organise accommodation or carriages to come and pick them up after the Titanic. But some of them are like detailing like affairs or these, you know, rendezvous that are going to happen when people get to New York or even just little love letters that are being sent between passengers. So now it's like getting in people's DMs for 50 bucks a message. Yes.

If that DM can be heard by every ship that's in the North Atlantic. Right. Yes. So the night before, Titanic's Marconigram was broken. So Jack Phillips stays up the entire night fixing this machine so that when they come in range of Cape Race, he can start sending these messages. He's up for 48 hours at this point

that he's sending these messages off to Cape Race. Now, the thing about Marconigrams is that the closer the transmitter is to you, the louder it will appear. Cape Race is miles and miles, about 500 miles away. So Jack Phillips has had to turn his operating system up so that he can hear these messages. And then all of a sudden, Californian, which is only about 20 to 30 miles away, it jumps in with this ice warning, and that just fries Jack Phillips' ears. You know, he's just getting this incredibly loud shouting, basically. Wow.

And so his immediate reaction is to tell this ship to shut up. And that's not necessarily an impolite message. It is certainly quite crude, but he's basically saying, I need you to shut off because your signal is interfering with my signal with Cape Race. Oh, my God. But what they were telling him is that you're headed straight for a field of icebergs? Yeah. And he was so focused on these messages that this is one of the theories is that he wasn't really paying attention to these actually important ice messages.

Yeah, I'm not surprised. Dude's been up for two days and he's got to tell everyone about where their affairs are going down when they make land again. And the other consequence is that the Californians radio operator now turns off their radio. No! And they turn it down. And so later in the night, there's apparently this moment where one of the crew of the Californian who's seen these distress rockets go up from the Titanic is starting to think, oh, maybe something's wrong. So they go in and he pops these headphones on and goes, oh, I can't actually hear anything. Everything must be all right. But that was because the radio was turned down.

Oh, my God. Yeah. The point is this ship, the Californian, it becomes very central to what we're going to hear later, which is this whole theory that they watched a ship in distress and did nothing. And there's a lot of question as why they didn't do anything and they certainly saw the rockets as i mentioned they seemed to have some confusion around what those rockets meant but the ultimate thing is they didn't go to help and just to confirm this didn't happen on the 4th of july so it definitely couldn't be confused for fireworks no but there is this very interesting phenomenon that we should talk about which is

called thermal inversion tim okay so the point of where Titanic sank is on this part of the North Atlantic Ocean where the Gulf Stream meets the Labrador Current now the course I know who well you have now the Labrador Current is much much colder than the Gulf Stream so if you have very very specific conditions namely a very calm ocean what those hot and cold currents meeting can do is create an artificial horizon. So the horizon actually appears much higher than it is in real life. So it's like a mirage. It is. It's what's called a superior mirage. So that can have the effect of, say, blocking out an iceberg from sight. And this is a theory for

why they saw the iceberg so late, was it was hidden with this superior mirage. But the other thing that it can do is it can make ships that are much further away than you should be able to see, make them appear closer. So the Californian was sure that they were seeing a ship much closer to them that was very small, but they may have in fact been seeing the Titanic, which was much further away, but its image was being lifted by this mirage. Ah, the old Peter Jackson forced perspective trick. Exactly.

And it would also make these distressed rockets that they're sending up appear much lower. And that's what kind of confused them because they were like, why is it sending up these tiny little rockets? That's the whole thing that we're coming across now. And let's go back to the Carpathia, right? The ship that rescued the Titanic survivors. So when it arrives on the scene of Titanic's lifeboats the next morning, it sees two other ships. Now, Captain Rostron, who's in command of the Carpathia,

one thing he does say is these two ships weren't the Californian. He also says something that confuses me a little bit, but he kind of also seems to rule out the Mount Temple. We'll come to that ship in a second. But he says there's these two other ships that are there at the site. And bizarrely, these ships are never investigated. Okay, so I just want to check I've got this right. We're dealing with five

ships now. We've got a sinking Titanic. So-called Titanic. A sinking so-called Titanic. We've got the Californian, which is watching them sink. We've got the Carpathia that's coming up real hot to come and save everybody. And then we've got these two bonus mystery ships. We also have a sixth ship, Tim, which is the Mount Temple.

Of course. Now, the Mount Temple is really interesting because its captain and crew all testified that it was 50 miles away at the start of this disaster. That seems close. And it was seen by the Carpathia and the Californian the next day at the location of the Titanic sinking. But for all we know, it was the same as the Carpathia.

It came to the rescue. What's interesting is that in the weeks after the incident, some of the passengers and crew on board the Mount Temple come forward with this story that there was almost a mutiny on board that ship because they feel that the Mount Temple was so close to the Titanic that they could see and hear people in the water. That is horrifying.

But it's, again, never investigated. Why? At the time, at the time. That's crazy. Now, let's go back to these two mystery ships. It's unclear if one of these mystery ships is the Mount Temple, just because of the way that Captain Rostron wrote his affidavit. But let's say that it's not for a minute. We know there are two other ships that are almost exactly where Titanic sank earlier in the evening. Okay. One of them is the SS Parisian and the other is the SS Antillean.

Both of those ships were known to be in the area where the Titanic sank and had identified themselves through Marconi transmissions as being there. So they sent out a message saying, this is where I am, right? No questions about it. Parisian and Antillean, they're on the scene, baby. They're on the scene hours before the Titanic sank. We know that. That's a fact.

This is where it gets interesting. So the two ships that Captain Rostron from the Carpathians says he saw, one had four masts, the other had two. Interestingly, the Parisian has four masts and the Antillean has two. What's also interesting is that neither of those ships have any of their crew, passenger or anyone involved in them called before either of the two Titanic inquiries that will follow. No one is ever questioned from either of those ships where they were that night. Despite the fact that the position that Parisian gives where they were at about 6 30 that evening is exactly

where Titanic actually sank that's the correct position where Titanic really was is where Parisian was four hours earlier I'm no big city lawyer but I would definitely be investigating the people on those two ships and this is what I can never understand is why these ships weren't ever investigated yeah Carlo why weren't they ever investigated? The reason I think Tim is because they were there waiting for the Titanic to sink slowly. No. And then when that didn't happen and the light came up and there was no stricken Titanic and just a bunch of people in the water, they realized that this whole plan had gone terribly wrong and they just fled out of there

and we never hear from either of them again until they're sunk by a german torpedo in world war one or scrapped in the 1920s is that related no but it is a fun fact yeah i guess it depends on your idea of fun so let's just drill into the point here we've got a plethora of ships that are right around the Titanic. Some that are so close they can see Titanic sink. Some that are so close they can hear Titanic sink. And out of those five surrounding probable ships, there's two that are really close. In fact, they're on the exact same position where Titanic was five hours before it sunk. And no one investigates the people on board?

Yeah, in fact when we get to the British Board of Trades inquiry, there's a map that shows where all the ships were that were around the Titanic and they have Parisian there with a big question mark but they never ask anybody about it. Even if your exact conspiracy theory didn't happen, this is still pretty wild stuff. Yeah Tim, it's wild man and I really want to impress upon you that these five other ships, they weren't the only ships that were around Titanic. There were so many. And so I've put together a radio play for you to listen to, Tim.

It's a real-time radio play of Titanic's Morse messages, which I've transcribed into a script and had performed for your enjoyment. What? I just really want to impress upon you how many ships there were close to the Titanic and this is the best way I know how to do it. So Tim, please enjoy Titanic's Final Hours. It's Titanic's Final Hours for Radio on the Air with Carlo Ritchie starring Cape Race, the RMS Titanic, the RMS Olympic, the SS Californian, the SS Mount Temple, the SS Frankfurt, with the SS Iparanga and the RMS Carpathia. Titanic to Cape Race, to Harrison Sanford, New York, hello boy, dining with you in spirit tonight, heart with you always, love girl.

This is some of those backlog of messages we were talking about, right? That they're sending to Kate Race. So what are they talking about? This is some of those little love notes we were talking about before Tim. George Simmons, New York, weather delightful, feeling fine, hope all. CQD, this is Titanic. CQD, this is Titanic. So this message that Titanic's sending out now, CQD, that was the original SOS. CQ meant calling all ships or all stations.

D meant distress. Got it. Frankfurt to Titanic. What is the matter? CQD, this is Titanic. Position 41, 44N, 50, 24W. Okay, standby. CQD, this is Titanic.

Mount Temple to Titanic. What is the matter? Titanic to Mount Temple. Cannot hear you, old man. But here is my position. 41, 44N, 50, 24W. Come at once. Have struck a berg.

Received. Will tell Captain. CQD, this is Titanic. CQD, CQD. attention all stations this is mount temple titanic sending cqd says requires assistance gives position cannot hear me advise my captain he is at 41 44 and 50 24 w Attention all stations, this is Cape Race. Titanic giving position on CQD. Position 41-44-N, 50-24-W. Attention all stations, Titanic gives position here 41-44-N, 50-24-W. Requires assistance. So at this point I started to get a little bit worried about what had happened to Carlo. I invited him to come to New Zealand to hang out with me and tell me about this conspiracy theory he believed in,

but we're now five minutes into a two hour, 40 minute radio play, and I'm a little worried about the guy. Attention all stations, Titanic gives position here, 4144N5024W, requires assistance. Carpathia to Titanic, do you know Kate Race is sending a batch of messages for you? Titanic to Carpathian. Come at once. We have struck a berg. It's a CQD, old man.

Position 41-44N-50-24W. Shall I tell my captain? Do you require assistance? So that's the Carpathia team. That's the ship that's going to come to rescue Titanic. You can hear how assured they are and how assuring they are. They're trying to coach Titanic into knowing that everything's going to be okay. Titanic gives corrective position 4146N4014W, calling him no answer.

Position 4146N4014W, require immediate assistance of a collision with iceberg sinking. It was at this point in the day that I decided both Carlo and I were out of our depth, and I knew that I needed to get some professional help. So now I'm joined by Dr. Janina Scarlett, who is a licensed clinical psychologist, someone who knows a lot about mental disorders and when the brain doesn't do what it's supposed to be doing. Dr. Scarlett, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored. I've brought you on to the show at this point because I have a friend, let's call him Carlo. And Carlo has for his entire life been very interested to the point where i would call it an obsession uh with the rms titanic and this love of the titanic has led to him doing a lot of independent research by

himself which over the years has led to him believing that the recorded history we all know about titanic is wrong and he believes he has some unique knowledge about what really happened to Titanic. Some people might describe it as a conspiracy theory. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about the nature of conspiracy theories and if I need to be worried about where Carlo's at and maybe how I can help him. I think these are really important questions. be how I can help them? I think these are really important questions. And I think as a psychologist, the question that I usually like to ask is, how is this impacting this person's life? If this is something that's very meaningful for this individual, and it's helping them function, that's fantastic. I think that where, as a psychologist, I might be concerned is if the person is struggling in their everyday life

as a result of their search for truth. So if it's interfering with their ability to sleep or eat or interact with their loved ones or go to work, then we would want to think about some kind of an intervention or some kind of support to make sure the person is functioning well. But if they're on the road of their heart to find whatever they believe is the most authentic truth, then I don't know, as a psychologist, I would be applauding somebody for following what's really important to them. So from the point of view of clinical psychology, this extreme interest, obsession, some might call it, would only be problematic if it was affecting his sort of everyday life and getting in the way of his relationships and how he goes about day to day. Exactly. Okay. I'm going to do a little bit of digging to find out subtly how this might be

affecting the rest of his life. If I do come across some negative answers based on what he says, do you have any advice for me dealing with someone who has become very obsessed with what I would describe as a conspiracy theory? I think if it was me, I might say something along the lines of, hey, as somebody who loves you and cares about you. Here's what I observed and how can I support you to make sure that you're leading a life that is most balanced, most according to your greatest core values and so that you don't lose other things that are important to you like your friends, your family, and your job. You know, would you consider maybe talking to a therapist or somebody else that can help you really balance all the things that are important to you

while still maintaining your passion that clearly is very important to you as well. This is great practical advice that I can use. Thank you so much for all of your answers and your expertise today, Dr. Scarlett. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Have a wonderful day. Carpathia to Titanic. Titanic to Carpathia. Come quick. She's taken on water. It's full up to the boilers. Carpathia to Titanic. Titanic to Carpathia. Come quick. She's taken on water. It's full up to the boilers. Carpathia to Titanic. All our boats are loaded.

We are coming to you as hard as we can, old man. Double watch on engine room. Have your lifeboats ready when we arrive. You can hear at this point that Titanic's radio operator knows that it's close to us. Come as quickly as possible, old man. They're starting to panic.

And you can really hear that in the messages that are being sent out. And Carpathian is just there to try and help them get through it. You fool! Stand by! Stand by! Stand by and keep out! Keep out! We have not heard from Titanic for about half an hour. His power may be gone. CQD, this is Titanic. V! V! half an hour his power may be gone CQD this is Titanic right now the Titanic's losing power the messages are starting to get less and less clear and they're starting to fade away And with that, Titanic is gone.

Cool, man. Well, that was certainly as harrowing as I thought it would be. Yeah, it really is quite stark when you hear it in real time, hey Tim? Yeah, who knew that the deaths of 1,500 people at sea would be quite so sad? I think you just always feel like you want to be able to help them when you start hearing these distress messages. Yeah. Hey, Kylo, can I ask you a question? Yeah, man. That's the whole reason I'm here. Would you say that you're struggling in your everyday life?

Struggling? Yeah. I wouldn't think so, no. That's cool. You feel like you're spending enough time with your family. You've got a young daughter. Yeah, I like to kind of compartmentalize my passions. So I like to spend time with my family and spend time with my daughter

and bringing her up. And then I also like to have some time you know researching the Titanic I like to think of my life as like 16 watertight compartments on the bottom side of the Titanic amazingly that's an analogy I can now fully understand yeah I think it's important you know like we've had such a good time here in New Zealand yes I spent a lot of time working on this podcast and researching transcripts and things we also went to Hobbiton. That's awesome, man. A really nice family trip. That's so nice.

So, I mean, to put it another way, would you kind of say you feel like you're on the road of your heart? The road of my heart? Yeah. Yeah, does it feel like you're on the road of your heart? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I suppose I am on the road of my heart. Uh, yeah, I guess. Yeah, I suppose I am on the road of my heart. You mean like I'm following my passions?

I think so. Yeah, okay, yeah. I think I am on the road of my heart. That's a very nice way to think about it, Tim. Yeah. Cool. That is so great to hear, man. I guess I can just stop worrying about that.

So, the conspiracy. I really feel like I'm starting to understand what you've laid out for me now we've got the people involved we've got the motive of why they did it we've got the method in which they plan to do it which then went awry because of the iceberg all of these other crazy bits of happenstance got in the way one thing i don't understand is how they intended to get away with this all like surely there were some investigations even in this botched version of the plan, right? It was investigated, Tim. It was investigated twice. The thing is, the two investigations were very politically motivated

and I would argue very biased public inquiries. And I can prove it. But that's a story for the next episode. Hey listener, it's Tim here again. I'm pretty satisfied that Carlo isn't struggling in his everyday life too much. He's spending time with his family, and appears to be sleeping in between his Titanic research sessions. But I did get a comedian mate of mine to listen to this episode

to give perspective outside my bubble with Carlo. Courtney Dawson. Hello. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Big fan, big fan. Is that right? Absolutely. I've smashed the other episodes and I'm very honoured to be on this one. So Courtney, if you've listened to the other episodes so far, what do you think of this tale that Carla was weaving for us? Okay, I have to say straight off the bat, I am 100% convinced. I was convinced 10 minutes in, Carlo, I would trust you with my life. You sound like you know what you're talking about. So I mean, I was completely on board from the

get-go so like listening to this episode i was just like yeah absolutely are you a person who gets taken in by conspiracy theories easily or was there something specific about carlo's pitch that drew you in i don't want to um belittleittle Carlo's extensive research slash obsession. I am quite easily influenced. Okay. Yeah. I donate to like so many charities because as soon as they stop me in the mall, I'm like, yeah, absolutely.

Take my money, whatever it is. So, but having said that, I do, I do really appreciate the passion and the amount of work you've put into this. It's pretty incredible. What did you know about the Titanic going into this? Were you aware of this conspiracy theory, considering that you're a bit of a purveyor of them? I was not aware of this conspiracy theory at all. I was obviously aware of the Titanic.

In 97, I was nine. And when you talk about getting scared over and over again by the same movie, I was nine and when you talk about like getting scared over and over again by the same movie in the Titanic when the man falls off and flips around on the propeller yeah oh my god that was the first time I got traumatized by a movie it was it was horrible I like bawled my eyes out so Connie you know you've said you're wholeheartedly on board what makes it a compelling conspiracy for you i think particularly in this episode or i guess i can't remember which episode it was i banged them up pretty hard but i'm pretty oh that was weird i banged them up pretty fast so they've all merged into one podcast

episode um but do i believe that a mega rich businessman tried to pull a scam for some money and accidentally killed 1500 people uh yeah i can believe that that was probably the most yeah compelling thing but also just like you know when you just try and like pull a prank or a scam and then it like blows up in your face this is like a terrible analogy but do you guys remember um like on infomercials where they would sell those like workout so many ab products yeah like to like make you have abs and it was like the six minute abs and everyone was trying to undercut the last guy it started with 20 minute abs then it was 18 minute abs 16 14 12 8 exactly so there was one that i think it was early on so it was like 10 minute abs um my my auntie had one of those things where it's like it's like a bench press but the sides are adjustable and my cousin was because this is the thing with those infomercial things it starts

off you use it for about a month and then it turns into a toy for the kids so there were we just had this like playground of um disused uh infomercial machines we were playing on it my cousin was lying on it and it was sort of propped up by the stick on an angle so this is my prank i was like i'm gonna kick the stick and then he's gonna fall back and like it was patted wait how old was the kid oh he was probably like seven and and i was pretty little he was seven and i was maybe like nine or ten yeah and you just seemed like these big propellers on the titanic there's a lot of trauma that you needed to get rid of exactly this is how bad that movie damaged me i'm out here trying to like hurt my cousins but so i tried to kick the stick so that he would fall

back but i kicked it and then the metal bench press fell on my toe crushed my toe it was the most excruciating pain i've ever felt and i've given birth to a child and then my toenail turned black fell off and took two years to grow back god damn so that was your jp morgan attempting to take down the titanic equivalent exactly and i deserved i deserved it hard out far out that is harrowing and so that that that rich man deserves to um to be exposed by this podcast, even though he's probably been dead for so, so long. We'll dig him up and we'll put him on public shame. So, Courtney, let me ask you this. Do you feel like you sort of understand the main storyline

that Carlo is weaving here? Like, I've got the benefit of having this dedicated space where it's just he and I in a room listening to him, but I know that there's a lot of information. It quite dense there's a lot of facts there's some people to hold in your head do you feel like you're getting what he's laying down yeah I feel like it's the scam of trying to swap the boats the fire yeah actually this is fun let's start from the start you tell me what you think Carlo thinks has happened yeah shopper i just told you how bad my memory is so thanks for this but it's basically like okay money hungry businessman

they the the the current is too strong sucked in multiple boats one of them smashed the side then they had to swap the boats secretly. And then they swapped them. Then they tried to, oh, yeah, so the scam, they're going to sink the boat. They light the fire. Then they smash into the icebergs. And all of this other stuff is going on where they like, what's the thing with the fake horizon, the mirage? Oh, a superior mirage yeah the the horizon appears

higher than it should be that makes complete sense to me i don't understand the scientific what's that thing called a mirage oh yeah superior marsh yeah makes perfect sense to me 100 how can how can quicksand be real superior mirage has to be real that was a great job of summarizing where we're at i don't think so i think it was okay okay well courtney what if i told you that in the next episode we are getting into the minutiae of two official investigations into titanic does that sound interesting to you i cannot wait i love that i love that there's oh my god yeah because okay first of all, like, the people, the businessmen, ****ed up. The boat, ****ed up.

Then, oh, the government's ****ed up? Oh, no, that's so crazy. Of course they are. So I cannot wait to hear the details of that. I'm pumped. So I've got to ask you, Courtney, did Titanic sink? This might come as a surprise to you guys, but no, the Titanic did not sink.

It did not sink. There's no way. Score one for carlo can i ask one quick question related to this podcast corny so you will have heard like a couple of our previous guests have their biggest problem with this conspiracy theory is they felt like people would have would have spoken out have you been satisfied that this could stay a secret for so long uh yeah i am well i mean it is a pretty long time but i think that it is possible because if you think about things like mk ultra which were like you know bad conspiracy theories and stuff and a lot of the details of that is only coming up now and that's closer to our time where there's like more

technology and access to information and stuff so i feel like it's completely it's completely possible to keep it hidden yeah 100 well courtney you're officially our most worrying guest on the podcast so far i'm concerned for you oh as long as i'm winning something I'm happy Whatever the award that's fine It's been so great talking to you Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the Titanic And wider conspiracies Thank you so much South, Tim Batt and Carlo Ritchie. The executive producers are Tim Watkin and Justin Gregory.

Katie Gossett is the associate producer for RNZ. All episodes are directed by Chelsea Preston-Crayford with audio engineering by Blair Stagpole and original music by Eilish Wilson, Hekurangi Scarverian-Karr and Phoebe Johnson. Additional voicing from

Lee Hart, Guy Montgomery, Ali Budler, Alice Matthews, and Jackie Van Beek. With special guest Courtney Dawson. Inquiry transcripts courtesy of the Titanic Inquiry Project. Marconiogram transcripts courtesy of Sean Collin. This project would not be possible without the work of the Titanic Inquiry Project. Subscribe to Did Titanic Sink on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you listen.