Don’t Believe These Four Myths About the Titanic

No matter what the movies say

Paul Combs
Artisanal Article Machine
5 min readAug 14, 2024

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

It has been 112 years since the tragic sinking of RMS Titanic in the early morning of April 15, 1912. More than 1,500 lives were lost in the most famous maritime disaster in history. And almost since the moment the great ship slid beneath the waves rumors, myths, and outright lies have surrounded the event; many of these myths have only been further magnified by the success of the 1997 James Cameron film Titanic. Where does truth end and myth begin? Let’s take a look.

1. Titanic was unsinkable. Easily the biggest myth about the Titanic is that everyone at the time believed she was unsinkable. This is simply not the case. The White Star Line never made such claims about the ship being unsinkable, though both the owners and the ship’s builders did call her “practically unsinkable.” The marketing focus of the company was not on the ship’s seaworthiness but on her luxury, and with First Class tickets costing from $1,700 up to $50,000 in today’s money, this made good business sense.

The claim (and resulting myth) of unsinkability actually only arose after the ship sank. This idea was solidified in the public’s imagination when Philip Franklin, head of the White Star Line office in New York, first received word that Titanic had hit the iceberg. Franklin told reporters

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Paul Combs
Artisanal Article Machine

Writer, bookseller, would-be roadie for the E Street Band. My ultimate goal is to make books as popular in Texas as high school football...it may take a while.