The unthinkable about the unsinkable

The Titanic never hit an iceberg. The liner sank with the loss of 1,500 lives after hitting a blacked-out ship lying in its path in the middle of the Atlantic.

What really happened on that terrible April night in 1912 is finally coming to light after one of the most appalling cover-ups in history - a whitewash so shocking that even now it's difficult to take in the enormity of the crime.

For it hid a wicked insurance scam. The fraud involved swapping the Titanic with her damaged but otherwise identical sister ship the Olympic, but through an accidental collision it was to end with horrendous loss of life in the frozen waters of the north Atlantic. As conspiracy theories go, Oxford plasterer turned author Robin Gardiner has always thought big. But even he appears to have gone totally overboard this time, with a new book that dishonours the dead and comes up with the unthinkable about the unsinkable.

The Titanic is a subject that obsesses people, and it has certainly taken over the life of Mr Gardiner, 52, who lives in Barton with his wife and teenage son. Two decades of research led him to conclude the official story of the Titanic was riddled with inconsistencies. But his dark suspicions have proved highly profitable.

Three years ago he received a £100,000 advance for his book The Riddle of the Titanic, co-written with respected maritime historian Dan Van Der Vat. In it, Mr Gardiner claimed the liner at the bottom of the Atlantic was not the Titanic but RMS Olympic, which had been damaged in a collision with the warship HMS Hawke soon after its launch. He argued that as a result of an inquiry, the ships' owners, the White Star line, could not recover the cost of repairs on their insurance companies. To avoid financial disaster, a plot was hatched to switch the brand new Titanic with her slightly older sister. It was further resolved, he claimed, that the Olympic had to be got rid of "in such a way as to be able, this time, to collect on their insurance".

Total madness? Well after being heralded as "impeccably researched and brilliantly argued" by the London Evening Standard and "intellectually satisfying" by the Times Literary Supplement, the book entered the top ten bestsellers lists in Britain and Italy. Worldwide, it has sold more than 250,000 copies.

But Mr Gardiner was never going to leave it there. His new book, Titanic: The Ship that Never Sank, claims even the iceberg is a terrible lie. He now says the plan to dispose of the "Titanic" (in reality the damaged Olympic) went wrong when it struck one of the vessels lying in wait to rescue passengers. "What lay in the Titanic's path was not an iceberg but one of the rescue ships. This vessel had its lights out and had probably been damaged by ice.

"For this reason Titanic's lookouts, who were concentrating on searching the sea ahead of the ship for ice, failed to see the darkened silhouette of the blacked-out ship until it was too late to avoid a collision."

With a hole punched in its starboard bow by the mystery vessel's steel hull, the Titanic crew attempted to put as much distance as possible between themselves and what they believed to be their accidental victim.

"Momentarily, the plan to dispose of their own ship was forgotten," claims Mr Gardiner.

And so the doomed Titanic moved southward, away from the Californian, which he alleges was also waiting to rescue passengers. He goes on to describe how the Titanic's officers were crippled when the fake emergency suddenly became a real one. "Had things worked out as anticipated, there would have been no hurry to evacuate the ship because it would have been in no danger of foundering until they were ready," he said. So instead of an orderly evacuation, there was chaos. Even one of the story's most heroic officers is alleged to have removed a boy from a lifeboat at gunpoint before escaping in the boat himself.

"I do not think I have got it all right," said Mr Gardiner. "But if it makes people get off their backsides and ask questions I will be happy with that."

Of course, the theory means accepting that many heroes were corrupt and ready to risk hundreds of innocent lives for reasons of pure greed. Then there is the little matter of believing that many people, from the lookout Fred Fleet - who killed himself in 1965 - to Capt Edward Smith, who went down with his ship, took the dark secret to their graves.

And as for the real Titanic? That sailed on for 25 years, earning the nickname Old Reliable.

*Titanic: The Ship that Never Sank is published on October 19 by Ian Allan publishing at £16.99.

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