Hidden fire may have sunk Titanic
In the tragic history of the Titanic, the iceberg takes much of the blame. However, a journalist who has spent 30 years researching the disaster believes that it was fire, not ice, that sealed the liner’s fate.
The Titanic’s hull was fatally weakened by a fire that had been smouldering in a coal bunker in the boiler room since it left the shipyard in Belfast, Irish journalist and author Senan Molony claims in a new documentary.
Photographs of the ship with a dark mark on its hull before it left Southampton – at the same spot the iceberg struck – support the theory, he says.
Molony claims that J Bruce Ismay, president of the company that built the ship, and the man forever branded a coward for taking one of the few lifeboat places, knew about the fire but downplayed its significance in the aftermath of the disaster.
In Molony’s documentary Titanic: The New Evidence , to be broadcast on Channel 4 in Britain today, he suggests that the prolonged fire subjected the partitions, or bulkheads, in the hull to temperatures in excess of 1000C, making the steel so weak and brittle that what should have been a minor collision became a catastrophe that killed more than 1500 people.
‘‘The official Titanic inquiry branded [the sinking] as an act of God. This isn’t a simple story of colliding with an iceberg and sinking,’’ Molony said. ‘‘It’s a perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together: fire, ice and criminal negligence.’’
He points to dark marks that can be seen on the ship’s starboard side in a set of photographs that came to light in a private auction recently.
Molony believes it is evidence of the fire inside, and the reason why the most luxurious ocean liner of its day was, unusually, reversed into its berth – presenting the unmarked side to passengers as they boarded.
‘‘Nobody has investigated these marks before or dwelled upon them. It totally changes the narrative,’’ Molony said.
‘‘Since 1912, there has been this myth of a 300-foot 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 metallurgy 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.’’
David Hill, former secretary of the British Titanic Society and editor of the society’s journal, said: ‘‘There certainly was a fire. It set sail on Wednesday and they didn’t get it out until the Saturday, so it must have been a big one.
‘‘Was it a life-changer? It’s my personal opinion that it didn’t make a difference.
‘‘It just shows that even after all these years, this old ship keeps throwing up new things that have us scrambling around. It’s absolutely fascinating.’’
A secret fire, Molony claims, would go some way to explaining why the Titanic was going so fast through icy seas.
‘‘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.’’