Fact Check: Did the Titanic have a sister ship? Conspiracy theory around sinking goes viral amid search for missing submersible

As the Titanic-bound submarine went missing, several netizens expressed interest in the ship’s wreckage. Several conspiracy theories claiming that the ship in question never sank have surfaced online. Netizens believe that the water vehicle was replaced by its sister ship, Olympic. However, experts have debunked the same. The following article will look into the ship’s two popular sisters.

A massive search and rescue operation is underway for OceanGate’s submarine, the Titan. Five wealthy passengers remain onboard as coast guards search for the submersible. At the time of writing this article, there were lesser than 20 hours of oxygen left in the vessel, making the situation at hand dire.

The latest update revealed that search crews had detected “underwater noises” while searching for the sea vehicle.

As the search continues, netizens took to the internet to debate whether the ship that suffered wreckage was the Titanic itself. Many conspiracy theorists believe that its sister ship Olympic actually took its place for the voyage and eventually sank. Some tweets read:

However, the rumors are untrue. Neither the Olympic nor the Britannic suffered from the infamous wreckage everyone is well aware of.

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Everything to know about the Titanic’s sister ships and the water boat that eventually sank

For those unversed, the Titanic has two sister ships which are the Olympic and the Britannic. The trio was built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast. There is a common misconception that the “Unsinkable Ship” had another sister ship called the Lusitania however, it is not its sister ship.

One tends to believe that the Lusitania was one of the sister ships as it suffered a tragic maritime disaster as well. However, the Lusitania was built by John Brown and Company, Scotland, and was operated by the Cunard Line, unlike Titanic’s White Star Line. The Lusitania had its own sister ship which was Mauretania and a “cousin ship” which was Aquitania.

Returning to Titanic’s sister ships, the Olympic was launched in October 1910 and stands as the oldest of the three sister ships. The ship that was designed to carry mail could carry over 2300 passengers and was incredibly luxurious. It was nicknamed the “Old Reliable” during the First World War after it sank a German U-boat off the coast.

Many tend to believe that the Olympic was the ship that sank in place of the Titanic. The viral claim suggests that the two were replaced as a part of an insurance fraud scheme. Others claim that the ships were switched to kill three powerful businessmen who were opposed to a central banking system in the United States, which is now called the Federal Reserve.

However, the theories are far from the truth. Maritime historians have confirmed that it was certainly the Titanic that sank and not the Olympic. Each ship had its own construction identification number, also known as a yard number. Olympic held the 400-yard number while the "Unsinkable Ship" held the 401 number. It has been revealed that multiple artifacts that belonged to the 401 ship were eventually raised from the wreckage and auctioned off.

The Titanic and Olympic’s other ship sister was the Brittanic which was built to serve as a passenger line. Sadly, the ship suffered a wreckage as well. In November 1916, the ship struck a mine in the Aegean Sea which led to a puncture in the starboard bow of the ship, making the water gush inwards into the ship. Fortunately, most of the passengers and crew were saved.

People worldwide now await an update on the Titan submarine.