The ship resting at the bottom of the Atlantic is the Titanic, not the Olympic

The Titanic sank more than 100 years ago, but still sparks conversation. It took the lives of  1,500 people and inspired a famous on-screen romance between actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in a movie based on its ill-fated voyage. But it also fueled conspiracy theories about the British luxury liner, some of which show up in social media posts.

"The famed ship at the bottom of the North Atlantic is actually NOT The Titanic. It is her near-identical sister ship The Olympic," a Nov. 29 Facebook post said. The post also said"she was switched out last minute, as part of a MASSIVE insurance fraud scheme involving The White Star Line and J.P. Morgan."

The post showed three ships. It labeled one as the "RMS Olympic" (RMS, which stands for Royal Mail Steamer) and another as the "RMS Titanic." The third image is unlabeled but points an arrow to a sunken ship with the text: "Thin windows - unevenly spaced," which also appears in the Olympic image. In the alleged Titanic image, the text reads: "Large windows - evenly spaced."

(Screenshot of the Facebook post.)

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Both ships were built by Harland and Wolf, a company in what’s now Belfast, Northern Ireland. They were built from a common design and both constructed at an open-air Belfast shipyard, but they had differences. For example, the Titanic’s yard number — a unique number shipbuilding companies bestow on vessels they build — was 401; the Olympic’s yard number was 400.

Shipmakers began building the Olympic on Dec. 16, 1908. A little more than three months later, on March 31, 1909, they started making the Titanic. The Olympic set out on its maiden voyage  June 14, 1911. Although it was involved in a collision with another ship during its fifth commercial voyage, the Olympic operated until 1935, when it was retired from service and later sold for scrap.

The Titanic departed on its first voyage April 10, 1912, with more than 2,200 passengers, before colliding with an iceberg, breaking apart and sinking over the course of two days, April 14 and 15, 1912.

"There can be no question that the ship at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean is the RMS Titanic, Harland & Wolff Yard No. 401," J. Kent Layton, a maritime historian and author of several books about the Titanic, told PolitiFact. "The claim that the two ships were switched has never had any strong supporting evidence."

Layton also pointed out that both the shipbuilders and the crew members would have noticed the ships had been switched. The Titanic had about 15,000 people working on it at its peak.

The Titanic's top deck forward promenade was built to be enclosed because, on the Olympic, first-class passengers had slipped on the uncovered forward end of the deck. 

The layout of the Titanic’s deck just below the top deck included rooms that did not exist on the Olympic. Also, the crew quarters’ layout differed between the two ships.

The pictures accompanying the Facebook post are of the Titanic

(Screenshot of the Facebook post.)

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Layton said all three photographs in the Facebook post are of the Titanic.

The photo at the top was taken as the Titanic departed Southampton, England. "It matches the configuration of B Deck windows and the enclosed promenade visible at the wreck site," Layton said.

The middle photo was taken May 31, 1911, the day the Titanic was launched in Belfast, Layton said. At that time, it was just a shell with no interior spaces or engines.

Evidence shows the sunken ship was number 401, the Titanic. Auctioned items from the Olympic in 2023 and 2019 support this, as do items recovered from the Titanic wreck, which bore the number 401.

The Facebook post claimed that the Titanic was replaced at the last moment as part of a large-scale insurance fraud scheme.

However, the Titanic's insurance was not enough to cover the Olympic’s loss, nor its own cost. Laytons said, "The switch conspiracy falls apart — quite literally — on its financial merits alone."

We previously rated a post claiming that the Titanic’s sinking was orchestrated to kill businesspeople who opposed the Federal Reserve’s creation Pants on Fire.

A Facebook post claimed that the ship that sank in the Atlantic was not the Titanic, but its sister ship, the Olympic.

This is baseless. The Olympic remained in service until 1935, when it was retired. Objects recovered from the sunken Titanic site bore the number 401, the unique identifier associated with the destroyed luxury liner. And a Titanic historian said  the conspiracy theory suggesting a financial motive for a deep-sea switcheroo makes no mathematical sense.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!