Titanic expert claims that ship was on fire for days before it hit iceberg during doomed Maiden voyage
THE legendary Titanic was scuppered by a catastrophic blaze on board rather than a collision with a giant iceberg, an investigator claims.
Journalist Senan Molony, who has spent decades probing the disaster, believes it was fire not ice that sealed the fate of the liner and the 1,500 passengers which died.
He claims the “unsinkable” ship was fatally weakened by a secret blaze that had been smouldering in the boiler room’s coal bunker since she left Belfast on April 2 1912.
Molony said: “The official Titanic inquiry branded it (the sinking) as an act of God.
“This isn’t a simple story of colliding with an iceberg and sinking. It’s a perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together: fire, ice and criminal negligence.”
The author – whose theory is not accepted by many historians – points to “burn” marks seen on the starboard side of the vessel in a set of photographs that came to light in a private auction.
One of these pictures shows a 30-foot-long dark mark on the hull – right where the iceberg was known to have struck the three-storey ship.
Molony previously told the Times he believes the mark is the reason why the ocean liner unusually reversed into her berth — presenting the unmarked side to posh passengers as they boarded.
“Nobody has investigated these marks before or dwelled upon them. It totally changes the narrative,” he said.
“Since 1912, there has been this myth of a 300ft gash that opened the ship up but when the wreckage was examined, people were perplexed because they couldn’t find anything like it.
“We have experts telling us that when you get that level of temperature against steel it makes it brittle, and reduces its strength by up to 75 per cent.
“The fire was known about and briefly addressed at the inquiry, but it was played down.
“She should never have been put to sea but the Titanic had already been delayed a couple of times and was committed to leaving on April 10.”
THE UNSINKABLE SHIP - FASCINATING FACTS ABOUT THE TITANIC
Titanic was the world’s largest passenger ship when it entered service – measuring 269 metres – and was the largest man-made moving object on Earth.
It burned around 600 tonnes of coal a day and almost 100 tonnes of ash were ejected into the sea every 24 hours.
There were 20,000 bottles of beer on board, 1,500 bottles of wine and 8,000 cigars – all for the use of first-class passengers.
Up to 246 injuries and two deaths were recorded during the ship’s 26-month construction in Belfast.
The last supper served to first-class passengers consisted of 11 courses.
First-class passengers were given a book containing 352 songs, with musicians on board required to know all of them in case requests were made.
James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic about the disaster has grossed more than £1.5bn, won 11 Oscars and is one of the highest grossing film of all time.
A secret fire would also help explain why the Titanic was going so fast through icy seas, Molony claims.
He added: “The way to deal with the fire [in the bunker] would have been to dig out the coal, and put it in the only other possible place, the furnace, which meant the ship was going at a much higher speed.”
The RMS Titanic was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast and was the largest passenger ship the world had ever seen.
It set off on its maiden voyage from Southampton on April 10, 1912, due to arrive in New York City on April 17.
But five days into the journey, it collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic with around 2,224 passengers and crew on board.
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At 11.40pm, a lookout had sounded the alarm and telephoned the bridge warning: “Iceberg, right ahead”.
But tragically the warning came too late and 37 seconds later, Titanic struck the iceberg – tearing a series of holes along the side of the hull.
The iceberg was around 100 feet tall and came from a glacier in Greenland.