So what really happened? Well, according to eye witness reports, Hawke did come up from behind Olympic , on her starboard side, and did appear to be attempting to overtake. However, from that point onwards the received version of events is demonstrably untrue. In Hawke's path was the brand new South American patrol vessel 10 de Octobre , which had just been completed by White's Southampton shipyard and was out for its initial trials. The presence of the foreign warship meant that Commander Blunt had to alter course towards the Isle of Wight in order to pass between her and Cowes , somewhat limiting his room for manoeuvre. Hawke , after going around the new patrol boat, then turned ninety degrees to port (left), which would have taken several hundred yards, and slammed into Olympic's side at right angles. Hardly the collision one would expect if the smaller naval ship had been accidentally drawn into the liner's side by the ‘suction effect'. The collision was so violent that Olympic's stern was pushes around by something more than forty five degrees, which indicates that the cruiser's engines were still at full-ahead when she struck the liner. The force of the collision and the fact that Hawke was specifically designed to sink large ships by ramming them argues that the damage sustained by the White Star ship would be rather more than that described above. That Commander Blunt had to go around a foreign warship, that he would not have expected to be on the scene, in order to reach Olympic suggests that the collision might not have been an accident at all.

Olympic was brought to a halt so that the extent of the damage could be assessed. Captain Smith, before any personal messages concerning the incident could be sent out by passengers, ordered a wireless blackout. Only signals approved by him were allowed to leave the stricken liner. Even though Olympic was noticeably down by the stern, very shortly after the collision, no preparations were put in hand to evacuate the liner.

Despite Captain Smith's apparent lack of concern some passengers were prepared to make their own arrangements to either get a message away or to leave the damaged ship. Immediately after the Hawke collision Captain Smith issued orders that nobody, except White Star officials, was to enter or leave Olympic . (Apparently, as appears usual with incidents concerning White Star vessels, a security clampdown was put into immediate effect, which leaves one wondering why) However, Mr Magee, of San Francisco , an American passenger, who was particularly anxious about getting back to New York , succeeded in getting off the ship. He hailed a boat which was being rowed by a young fellow called Spencer, and sliding down a rope which was passed out of a porthole, he managed to reach the boat and was taken ashore. He rewarded Spencer with a couple of sovereigns. On reaching Cowes Magee made straight for the shipping office of WT Mahey and telephoned from there to try to book passage to New York in the Adriatic , which sailed from Liverpool on Thursday evening. He was unable to complete the arrangements and left by passenger steamer for Southampton . Mr Magee explained his hasty departure, “The fact is, I wanted to see my baby at home, and seeing that the Olympic was out of commission, I thought I had better look out for another ship.” He had dangled, up to his waist in the water, for four or five minutes before Spencer had rescued him. Once he had reached Southampton he went to the White Star office “and booked my three berths on the Adriatic .” He was only just in time as there were only seven berths left on that ship when he booked. He would be 2 days late in seeing his baby. Who really was the American passenger on Olympic who was so desperate to get of the ship after the Hawke collision. His explanation that there was a child he must see is a little unlikely (to say the least) but he was so desperate to reach America that he was prepared to risk his life, and to pay for a three berth cabin on the Adriatic . (RH 4.5.00)

Another enterprising American, probably a journalist, who was on the Olympic , threw a watertight box attached to a piece of wood overboard. It was picked up by Mr Ernest Kirk, a photographer, and found to contain a cable message to the Boston Herald, briefly reporting the collision and stating that while there were many narrow escapes all were safe on board. Although no money was enclosed Mr Kirk despatched the cable at a cost of some £2.

That a passenger had to get a message away by putting it in a bottle and throwing it overboard confirms that Captain Smith had stopped the transmission of any messages from the damaged liner. It also argues that the American passenger was prepared for what happened, as was Mr Kirk. Is it really believable that Kirk would have sent this telegram at his own expense unless he had been pre-warned that the necessity might arise? After all, two pounds was a considerable sum of money in 1911; the equivalent today of a week's wages for an ordinary working man.

As mentioned above, the damaged liner returned to Southampton the following day so that the damage might be examined at Harland & Wolff's repair facility there. It was soon apparent that Olympic was very badly damaged and that any further planned voyages, for the foreseeable future, would have to be abandoned. Consequently, the White Star Line refused to pay Olympic's crew for the remainder of the aborted voyage after 22 September, justifying that decision by claiming that the ship was a wreck. Only if the ship was a wreck were the owners entitled to stop the crew's pay. Were the vessel merely damaged then the seamen were due payment for the complete voyage for which they had signed aboard. Not unexpectedly the crew were not happy with this decision and consulted their union officials at the earliest opportunity.

As was only to be anticipated, the seamen's union contested the owner's decision to stop their member's wages and the first court case began on 29 September. The case was initially heard at the petty sessions of the Southampton County Court but the magistrates were unable to come to a verdict, so on 11 October they referred the whole thing to the Admiralty Court ; the date set was in March 1912. A determination was arrived at on the first day of April. The court found in favour of the owners. They agreed that following the Hawke incident Olympic was a wreck. Still not satisfied the seamen took their grievance to the Court of Appeal, basing their case on section 58 of the merchant Shipping act of 1894. “Where the service of a seaman terminates before the date contemplated in the agreement (of service), by reason of the wreck or loss of the ship . . . he shall be entitled to wages up to the time of such termination, but not for any longer period.”

“The word “wreck” within this section (of the Act) means something less than total loss. Any damage to a ship from a cause for which neither the master nor the owner, on the one side, nor the seamen, on the other, is actively responsible, which damage does not constitute loss of the ship, but of necessity renders her incapable of carrying out the maritime adventure in respect of which the seamen's contract was entered into and so terminates the service of the seaman, will render the ship a “wreck” within the section.” The appeal failed.

The Appeal Court hearing the seamen's claim that their wages should not have been stopped following the collision between Hawke and Olympic would have been aware that the accident, according to the Naval Inquiry, had been entirely the fault of the liner. They knew that the owners and master had been found responsible. As the accident had been judged to be the responsibility of the owners there can only be one justification for the court upholding their decision to terminate the crew's wages. Olympic really was a wreck following her brush with HMS Hawke .

It took Harland & Wolff's repair yard at Southampton two weeks to patch the damaged liner up well enough for her to even attempt the voyage back to Belfast for proper repairs. A gigantic patch, not unlike a big sticking plaster, made of heavy timbers above the waterline and steel plates below it, was placed over the damaged hull plating to seal up the hole. For the trip back to the builders, which began on 3 October, Olympic was obliged to steam on just her port main engine, which tell us that the centrally mounted turbine was damaged and unusable, along with the starboard reciprocating engine. Under normal circumstances this turbine could operate on the exhaust steam from one or both of the main engines. By the time the ship made it back to the Belfast yard the patch on her hull had failed and the same two aft compartments were once again flooded.

Once back at Belfast , with the water pumped out of her and the stern lightened sufficiently to allow Olympic to enter the Thompson Graving Dock, she could be properly examined. There was the huge hour glass shaped hole in the plating, the starboard propeller was damaged and unserviceable, 18 feet of the outer steel propeller shaft covering was crushed and torn, the propeller shaft was bent and the crankshaft of the starboard engine was badly damaged. The bent shaft revolving for even one revolution, as it must have done, would have at least destroyed its bearings at the very rear of the ship and damaged the huge stern frames themselves. The stern propeller shaft bearings and frames were intended to last the lifetime of the liner and there was no provision for their replacement. In fact the first time that the stern frame of a large liner was replaced was in 1925/26. The impact of the collision must have given the starboard engine bed quite a jolt, which would inevitably have caused further structural damage. And we know that the centrally mounted turbine engine was unusable, which hints at damage deep within the ship, possibly to the keel itself.

These new ships represented, between them, a huge investment by White Star. They cost about one and a half million pounds each to build, and needed to operate without any serious problems for six or seven years before the company showed any sort of profit. All of the while the Olympic was out of service the White Star Line were losing money in lost fares as well as having to pay for the repairs. It was therefore a matter of some urgency to get the vessel back to sea as quickly as possible.

Harland & Wolff had no spare engine crankshaft, propeller, or propeller shaft on hand to replace those damaged items on Olympic , except ones awaiting fitment to her sister vessel, Titanic . In order to remove the damaged propeller shaft and engine crank hull plating over almost a third of the ship's length and sections of decking above them had to be stripped away. Nevertheless, with no other alternative left open to them Harland & Wolff set about repairing the damaged ship using cannibalised parts from the still incomplete Titanic . The propeller blades, which had come into contact with HMS Hawke , and consequently looked as if they had been gnawed by a giant rat, were replaced by those intended for the second sister ship and already bearing her yard number, 401. The 01 of that number is still clearly visible on the starboard main propeller of the wreck, commonly believed to be that of Titanic , which was supposedly discovered by Dr Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on 1 September 1985 . (There is evidence to show that the British Admiralty knew the whereabouts of the wreck for many years before Dr Ballard made his discovery of it.)

It must have been while these hasty repairs were going on that it was found that the ship was much more badly damaged than was first apparent. So badly damaged in fact that it was beyond economic repair. In all probability the tremendous wrenching and twisting forces imposed in the collision with Hawke had bent or broken the vessel's keel somewhere about its weakest point below the main engine room. The ship could be patched up and the hull reinforced, but it would never be the same again. Nor would it be up to weathering many Atlantic winter storms without coming apart. Nevertheless, the owners had to get a ship into service sooner rather than later. They couldn't even make a claim against their insurers since the naval inquiry had found Olympic wholly to blame for the collision with HMS Hawke , and any other inquiry was almost certain to do the same.

As we now know, these ships were the largest and most opulent vessels built up to that time but because of faulty workmanship they were anything but the strongest and safest. The hulls of all three vessels were of rivetted construction and in the most part a new technique, hydraulic rivetting, was employed. This new technique, which took the place of the older system of hand rivetting with red hot rivets should have resulted in much stronger and more reliable joints. Unfortunately the workers at Harland & Wolff saw the coming of the new technology not as a labour saving advantage but as a threat to their jobs (which in the long term it certainly would be). Adopting a somewhat Luddite attitude, instead of taking the care needed to position the new rivetting machines exactly where they should be to do their work effectively the workers didn't bother. Consequently many rivets were not put in straight or tight and in some cases the holes drilled for them were stretched out of shape. To make bad matters worse some of the plating of the ship's hulls had been drilled before the plates were bent to shape. This had also badly distorted some of the rivet holes, particularly where the plates had been bent around the curve of the ship's bilges. Large sections of this rivetting failed within months of Olympic entering service and the Board of Trade required the ship to be dry-docked in February 1912 for repairs. Many rivets were drilled out and replaced, and steel strips were rivetted over the joints to reinforce them. When the vessel returned to the yard in March 1912, ostensibly to have yet another propeller blade replaced, it was found that many more rivets had failed and much more reinforcement was carried out.

While Olympic was being patched up after her encounter with Hawke the solution to the owners' and builder's problems would have became obvious. Even as they cannibalised parts from the second, almost complete and practically identical, sister ship the idea of a complete switch must have occurred. After all, It wouldn't be the first or last time that the identities of ships had been transferred one to another. To this day the most common major maritime fraud is to switch the names of ships. If the ships were switched then the damaged Olympic , masquerading as her sister Titanic , could be lost at sea and an insurance claim made.

The second sister ship, still without propellers and shafts, was clearly not ready to take her place on the high seas so Olympic would have to be put back into service, if only for as long as it would take to complete Titanic . It still took more than two months to make the battered Olympic even remotely ready to resume her regular sailings between Southampton and New York . As already mentioned, parts intended for the newer vessel were fitted to Olympic , such as the starboard main propeller. However, because the ship was not intended to last for any appreciable amount of time at least some of these repairs were not properly completed; such as the cone at the rear of the propeller boss, designed to smooth the flow of water and reduced drag, which was never re-fitted. The omission of this relatively small item would have appreciably increased the running costs of the ship. Perhaps more importantly, the large bearing designed to transfer the thrust from the huge starboard propeller to the main stern frame and structure of the ship was never refitted. Without this vital bearing all of the stresses created by the propeller would have to be taken by the propeller shaft and engine bearings, shortening their life dramatically. In fact the life of the engines would have been reduced to a matter of months from the 25 years or so that the owners originally intended. (This massive bronze bearing, which must have been seriously damaged in the collision, was an expensive item in its own right.) It should also be remembered that the damaged starboard propeller with its bent shaft had continued to turn for at least one full revolution immediately after it came into contact with Hawke's armoured hull; as is proven by the fact that all three propeller blades were damaged in the collision. The bent shaft revolving in the massive bush bearing in the stern frame would have deformed that bearing to the point where it was useless. These bearings were designed to last the lifetime of the ship and there was no provision for their replacement. While the bearing might have been useable for a short time after it was damaged it would have worn very quickly and allowed the propeller and shaft to vibrate alarmingly. Curiously, Titanic did suffer from a serious vibration problem on her maiden voyage which was commented on by Lawrence Beesley, a second class survivor of the disaster. Beesley noticed that the vibration from the ship's engines was severe enough to cause his mattress to dance about.

The Olympic class ships were intentionally designed without longitudinal bulkheads but to stiffen the damaged hull one was installed in Olympic . Dr Robert Ballard, while exploring the wreck of the Olympic class ship on the bottom of the North Atlantic , did find a bulkhead within the vessel, which was not shown on any plan or builder's specification.

In November 1911 the Olympic , with Titanic's starboard main propeller and shaft, left Belfast to resume her career, though not for long. Even while repair work had been under way on Olympic conversion of Titanic into a reasonable twin of her sister had also begun. After Olympic's maiden voyage J Bruce Ismay, the Managing Director of the White Star Line, had suggested certain improvements for incorporation on Titanic . these had included the fitting of extra cabins on B Deck, which while it had been a promenade deck on Olympic would by completely turned over to cabins and public rooms on her sister. These alterations had been begun before the Hawke incident took place, at least as far as altering the window layout on B deck and probably constructing the cabins there as well. Fortunately, these cabins were built of light weight steel plates and it would not be at all difficult for Harland & Wolff to remove then again; which seems to be what happened. The open promenade areas at the rear end of B Deck on both ships was planned to be considerably longer on Olympic than on Titanic ; so this too required conversion. The B Deck window layout, regularly spaced windows on Olympic and irregularly spaced ones on Titanic , and the length of the aft promenade area on B Deck, long on Olympic and short on Titanic , are important recognition features.

A Harland & Wolff photograph of Olympic , taken when the vessel was in the Thompson Graving Dock in 1911, clearly shows her to have had a vertical joint in her hull plating immediately forward of the portside anchor hawsepipe. Photographs of Titanic , while still on the stocks and while fitting out in 1911, show that there was no similar joint in her hull plating just ahead of her portside anchor. However, In a picture of Olympic , taken during her 1912/13 refit following the Titanic disaster, shows this vessel not to have the tell-tale plating joint; proving quite conclusively that the hull pictured is that of Titanic although the name Olympic is clearly visible on both sides of the bow.

Photographs taken of Titanic at Southampton shortly before her maiden voyage show a large area of discoloured plating, as if it had been newly painted with paint that did not quite match the original, in the same location as Olympic's hull was damaged by HMS Hawke .

As previously mentioned, to make life easier for photographers Olympic's hull was painted white, or very light grey, for her launch. Titanic's hull was never painted light grey at all because as the second vessel of the class she was nothing like as newsworthy when it was her turn to enter the water. Curiously, where rust and marine life have flaked the top layers of paint from the hull of the wreck discovered by Dr Ballard patches of what appear to be white paint are exposed. Of course, white or light grey paint beneath the black topcoat of the hull means that whatever ship the wreck was it definitely was not Titanic .

And now we come to the very complicated but absolutely damning evidence contained in the Gross register Tonnages of Olympic and Titanic . Olympic was first registered on 29 May 1911 at 45,323.82 Gross Register Tons (GRT) and 20,894.2 Net Register Tons (NRT). Now these register tons are not a measurement of weight at all but a measurement of volume. A hundred cubic feet equals one register ton. The gross register tonnage represents the total enclosed areas of the ship including the superstructure, engineering and crew spaces. The net register tonnage is just the enclosed areas used by fare paying passengers; cabins, public rooms and so forth. It is the gross register tonnages that mainly concern us here.

Titanic was registered on 25 March 1912 at 46,328.57GRT. Titanic had a gross register tonnage that was 1,004.65 GRT greater than that of Olympic . The extra (roughly 1,000) tons were there because of the extra B Deck cabins, Café Parisien and enlarged restaurant, while the same areas on Olympic were open ended promenade deck but with large glass windows protecting passengers from the elements. Gross and net register tonnages were not calculated at the last moment but from measurements taken by Board of Trade inspectors as the ship was being built. Board of Trade inspector Carruthers visited Titanic almost 2,000 times during construction. As the differences between the B Deck layout of the two ships was already largely in place by early September 1911 then Carruthers would have already been well aware that Titanic would eventual finish up with a GRT approximately 1,000 tons greater than her sister. Because harbour dues and such like were calculated on a vessel's GRT it was an offence to understate that tonnage. This presented White Star and Harland & Wolff with a problem. With the GRT of Titanic already known to the Board of Trade they could not pass off the sister ship without bringing her up to something like the same specification, but they simply did not have the time to properly convert the whole of B deck to the same layout as that of Titanic . Nor could they leave Titanic with all of her cabins on B Deck if they wanted to pass her off as Olympic . Alterations to Titanic in order to make her the same in general layout and appearance as Olympic were not too much of a problem because the ship would remain in the yard from the time the decision to switch then was made in about October 1911 until the exchange actually took place in the first week of March 1912. It was not too much of a job to remove the alterations to Titanic's B Deck and convert it back to its original form. On the other hand, they would only have about a month to change Olympic's appearance to that of her sister, from early March 1912 until she was due to leave the yard, as Titanic , to prepare for her maiden voyage.

Because of the shortage of time the only alterations to Olympic's B Deck that could be completed were the two executive stateroom suites, the enlarged restaurant and Café Parisien. As these alterations noticeably altered the outward appearance of the ship it was essential that they were done in the time available. We know that the rest of the alterations were never carried out because during the sinking a steward walked along B Deck, checking that cabins were empty and locked. As he was carrying out his duties he could see the swung out lifeboats hanging from their davits two decks above, something he patently could not have done had there been cabins between the passageway he was in and the outside of the ship. To make up this shortfall of something like seven hundred Gross Register Tons the forward end of A Deck was enclosed. This work was actually carried out during the very last week that the vessel which sailed as Titanic was still at Belfast ; after the 25 March registration. Only in this way could Olympic be made to match up with Titanic's known GRT. The A Deck windows could not have been installed on Titanic at the last moment because they would have raised her GRT to something over 47,000 tons.

To put it in its most basic form. You can not add one thousand tons to a 46,000 ton ship and end up with a 46,000 ton ship. The vessel which sailed out of Southampton on 10 April 1912 can only have been a 45,000 ton ship with the last minute addition of 1,000 tons of GRT in her B Deck public rooms and enclosed area on A Deck.

Titanic's registration document has an interesting hand written note included in it which says , “Note 2. The undermentioned spaces above the upper deck are not included in the cubical contents forming the ship's register tonnage: Open space in front of poop 16 feet long = 65.24 tons. Open space abaft 2 nd class smokeroom, 6 ft long = 15.84 ton. Open space on promenade deck, abreast windows, port side, 198 feet long = 343.27 tons. Open space on promenade deck, abreast windows, starbd side 198 feet long = 377.24 tons.” Of course the spaces referred to are not above the upper deck at all but on A Deck. The document is dated 25 March 1912 . The man responsible for forwarding this document to the Registrar is Harold Arthur Sanderson (WS Manager). The registrar's signature is unreadable. The question is, why are these spaces not to be included in the GRT of the ship. The only believable reason is that they did not actually increase the cubic capacity of the vessel, which in its turn would mean that approximately the same cubic capacity had been lost somewhere else on the ship. Clearly this loss of capacity can not have occurred within the hull of the vessel or it would not have effected the GRT but only the NRT, but the removal of cabins on B Deck turning that area into open ended promenade space would have done so. That these spaces should have been included in the GRT is shown by the fact that they appear on the document at all. Had they been truly open spaces such as the after part of A deck then they would not have merited a mention. As all sorts of charges were calculated on the ship's GRT then it is completely unbelievable that HMG would allow WS to register a ship (any ship) at less than it true, chargeable, cubic capacity

The explanation put forward for the addition of the A Deck screens was that Joseph Bruce Ismay thought that they would protect promenading first class passengers from spray. A Deck, by the way, was almost fifty feet above the water, with a raised bulwark along its outside edge to protect promenaders and prevent them from toppling overboard before these alterations were envisaged. One can't help wondering just what cosseted first class passengers would be doing on deck in weather that would throw any appreciable amount of spray more than fifty feet in the air. Although Titanic's supposed sister ship sailed the North Atlantic, known for its violent storms, she was never fitted with these passenger protecting screens; and she was the flagship of the White Star Line fleet.

Only a few items recovered from the wreck have any sort of identification at all on them. One of these items, which in any way indicates that the ship might actually be Titanic is a helm indicator from the stern, or docking, bridge. This does have Titanic's build number on it, 401, but could easily have come from any vessel of the class. Another is a slate slab supposedly from the stewards lavatory on the portside of E Deck; unfortunately detailed drawings of Titanic show no provision for the fitting of any such slate slab was ever made. That Harland & Wolff mixed up parts from one ship with those of another is clearly illustrated by their still pricing items being fitted to Olympic to Titanic's account years after the sinking.

A section of hull plating recovered from the wreck does show an irregularity in the porthole layout on C Deck that should be peculiar to Titanic . The piece of plating comes from the side of the steward's toilets and has one more small porthole than the corresponding section shown in photographs of Olympic . As we know, the builders were trying to make the external appearance of one ship as similar as possible to that of the other. This extra porthole was cut in the white painted upper part of the hull and it was very visible. As the transformation progressed a new porthole would have been cut as a matter of course. The already existing porthole in the real Titanic would have been sealed up either during the week that the switch actually took place or during the ship's winter refit in at the end of 1912.

Before the ship known as Olympic was broken up shortly before the Second World War many of her fixtures and fittings were sold off, including the panelling from most of her public rooms. The oak panelling from the first class smoking room is now installed in the conference room of the Swan Hotel in Alnwick, for example. Other panelling from third class areas of the ship now adorn a private flat in the Wirral. This woodwork has the reverse sides clearly marked. On the panels the number 400 is stencilled, but on the frames the number 401 is clearly visible.

The one item recovered which should have been unmistakably marked, the vessel's crow's-nest bell, has no name or number on it. Normally one would expect to find the ship's name cast into a bell and it is the recovery of these that is usually accepted as proof of identity. In this case it would be no more proof than the helm indicator as such objects can all too easily be moved from ship to ship. As previously mentioned, to the present day the most common maritime insurance frauds involve changing the identities of ships.

Even the builders model, which looks like Titanic but which began life as Olympic , that is now on display at Liverpool Maritime Museum, has the build numbers of both ships, 400 for Olympic and 401 for Titanic , on different parts. Until this model, which was actually constructed by Harland & Wolff, was converted into a Titanic lookalike on the Museum's instructions it had represented Olympic although fitted with parts obviously intended for a model of her sister. At one time this model was even altered to represent the third sister ship Britannic .

After the sinking of the ship usually known as Titanic thirteen lifeboats were recovered and taken into New York, before being returned to Britain. While these boats were still at New York they had Titanic's name sanded off and the brass White Star badges and numbers removed, supposedly to deter souvenir hunters. Whilst removing the names and other paraphernalia workers discovered the name Olympic carved into the gunwales. The old name had been filled with putty and painted over. Eventually the boats were returned to Britain and a dozen of them were re-used by the White Star Line to help bring the number of boats aboard the second sister ship up to a level acceptable to the travelling public. Boat number 12, considered at the time to be an unlucky thirteenth was not re-used but lay at Southampton until the end of the first World War. Many local Sea Scouts had joined the Royal Navy on the outbreak of war, and some at least had given their lives for their country. By way of a thank you the thirteenth lifeboat, number twelve, was handed over to the Sea Scouts to use as a cutter. During the eight or nine years the boat had been laid up its appearance had deteriorated somewhat so the Sea Scouts set about tidying it up. They stripped of the old paint and there, cut into the gunwale of the old boat, was the name of Titanic's sister ship, Olympic . This boat was finally wrecked in a collision with the Gosport Ferry at Portsmouth and taken by the Royal Navy to Haslar for demolition. However, for many years afterwards its port and starboard White Star insignia were used as prizes by a local Sea Scout group.

While making preparations for the blockbuster movie ‘Titanic' the producer, James Cameron, paid a number of visits to the wreck. On one of those visits a small robot submarine equipped with cameras and powerful lights was sent deeper into the interior of the sunken ship that any other had been. The tiny submersible visited the special suite of staterooms that had been occupied on the fateful voyage by Joseph Bruce Ismay. Film taken by the robot showed the Empire style sitting room to be in a remarkable state of preservation with the cast iron fireplace with its veined marble surround to still be in place. Veined marble is a naturally occurring metamorphic crystalline limestone and, like snowflakes and finger prints, no two pieces are the same. However, the marble filmed on the wreck exactly matches that shown in a photograph of the corresponding stateroom aboard Olympic , taken in 1911. (Titanic – Breaking New Ground)

The question remains, ‘Why did they sink the Titanic ?' and perhaps more importantly, ‘why did the British and to a lesser extent the American governments help with the cover up? To find the answers, and they are many and varied, we must go back to well before the loss of the ship.