Repeated word removed from ninth paragraph
A much-shared meme has taken several facts about the Titanic out of context to make unfounded allegations that the ship’s sinking was a deliberate act. This is not true – experts generally agree that the downfall of the Titanic was an accident.
The meme was posted on Facebook on March 1 and has been shared more than 600 times (here). It consists of two images: one of the ship and a second of the American financier John Pierpont (JP) Morgan (here). It sits next to a wall of text indicating that Morgan had the motive for lowering the Titanic because it houses three powerful people who opposed his idea of a centralized banking system, namely the US Federal Reserve.
“DID YOU KNOW? The man who funded the Titanic’s building, JP Morgan, canceled his long-awaited trip just hours before his proposed departure,” reads the meme. “Three of the richest men on earth, who (sic ) was against the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank, was accidentally invited on board for his first voyage (John Aster, Isador Strauss and Benjamin Guggenheim).
‘After that, he drove at full speed to a famous iceberg field, with less than half the required lifeboats, no red signal flames, no Rothschild or Rockefeller on board and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. Less than a year later, now that the prosperous opposition was out of the way, the Federal Reserve was created and the US transformed into an incorporated enterprise, with its own ID number ’28 USC 3002 15. ‘
JP MORGAN EISE
While it is true that JP Morgan owned the Titanic and did not sail on his doomed maidan voyage (here), there is no evidence to suggest that he deliberately missed the voyage because he knew the ship would sink. Historians have debated Morgan’s reasons for canceling his trip, but have nothing to do with the Federal Reserve.
“I have never been able to find an authoritative source from 1912 that explains the exact reason why JP Morgan canceled his text on the Titanic, but he definitely did not do so ‘hours’ before the departure of the ship,” George said. Behe, expert on Titanic (here) told Reuters in an email.
Meanwhile, Don Lynch, a historian of the Titanic Historical Society (THS) (bit.ly/3l7uI9O), said: “One of the biographers of JP Morgan said that France was changing its laws to prevent Americans from taking art treasures from that country. to carry out, so Morgan went to Paris to oversee the purchase of his purchases from the country before the new laws came into force. ”
Advisory board member Ray Lepien, of THS, said that as well as the artificial treasure theory, ‘the’ official ‘statement was that he (Morgan) had become ill and wanted to take the’ medicine ‘with his mistress to a spa in France. . Lepien added: “It could have been both reasons.”
STRAUS, ASTOR AND GUGGENHEIM OPINIONS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE PROPOSAL
Though it’s also true that Isidor Straus, owner of the Macy’s store (here); John Jacob Astor, a real estate magnate (here and here); and Benjamin Guggenheim, a mining boss, died in the disaster in 1912 (here and here), there is no evidence to suggest that they were the target of deliberate sabotage. There is also no evidence that these three men were against Morgan’s centralized banking ideas.
First, Titanic’s maiden voyage attracted many prominent names and was called the ‘Millionaire’s Special’ (here, here).
Second, George Behe told Reuters he could not find any documents in his 45 years of research on the Titanic that proved the three men were against the Federal Reserve. In fact, a Washington Post investigation found that although Astor and Guggenheim did not take a public stance on the matter, Straus allegedly spoke in favor of the proposal (here and here).
US AS ‘INCORPORATED BUSINESS’
It is not true to say that after the establishment of the “Federal Reserve Bank” the United States was transformed into “an incorporated enterprise with its own ID number”.
In 1913, then-President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act and created a decentralized system that balances competing interests of private banks and populist sentiment (here). It had no bearing on the status of the United States as a sovereign federal republic of 50 states established and governed by the Constitution (here).
Professor Robert Hockett of Cornell Law School (here) told Reuters: ‘It’s always a tip that someone is ignorant of Fed matters when they refer to’ The Federal Reserve Bank ‘. There is no such entity. Rather, there is a ‘Federal Reserve System’ with twelve regional district banks of the Federal Reserve spread throughout the country (to avoid excessive centralization) and a government agency called the Federal Reserve to oversee this system. ”
The “business ID number”, 28 USC 3002 15, is in fact a reference to a subsection of the U.S. Code of Law that defines the United States (here). Subsection 15 of Article 3002 reads: ” United States’ means federal corporation; an agency, department, commission, board or other entity of the United States; or an instrumentality of the United States. ‘
Hockett said: “The word ‘corporation’ as used in that legislation does not mean ‘corporation’.” This is another important tip that someone does not know what he is talking about – to combine the word ‘corporation’ with the expression ‘business corporation’ or ‘private corporation’.
” Corporation ‘is just the Latin word for’ body ‘or’ entity ‘(hence’ Marine Corps’, ‘Corpus Christi’ and of course ‘body’). It is used in legal language to refer to all kinds of legally created entities. No profitable business is implied by this use. To think differently is a bit like thinking a sailboat should be a motorboat, because both words contain the root ‘boat’. ”
TITANIC ‘S SINKING WAS AN ACCIDENT
Experts widely agree that the line disaster, in which more than 1,500 people died (here), was an accident. However, they are debating the finer details.
One explanation, according to Behe, is that the officers of the ship ‘wrongly believed’ that good visibility on the high seas would be an advantage to present any dangers in a timely manner. He added: ‘The subsequent collision with the iceberg was just an unfortunate consequence of a’ perfect storm ‘of adverse conditions (dead calm water, no moon, etc.) and had nothing to do with any silly conspiracy theory related do not agree with the federal reserve. . ”
Reuters reported in 2010 on another possible statement indicating that the boat hit an iceberg due to a basic steering error, and sank just as fast as it did because an official persuaded the captain to continue to sail (here).
Encyclopaedia Britannica says such a ‘steering error’ caused the Titanic to rotate more slowly than when it was moving at its original speed. Most experts believe that the ship would survive if it hit the iceberg from the front ”(here).
VERDICT
Missing context. The meme took several facts about the Titanic out of context to falsely suggest that the liner was intentionally sunk. Experts generally agree that the disaster was an accident.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.