conspiracy theories

Was the Titanic swapped with its sisters ship ep1

It is an historical irony that the most famous ship to ever sail was famous because it sank, but that was the case with the RMS Titanic. Then the world’s largest and most luxurious cruise liner, it hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage early on the morning of the 15th April 1912.
Within three hours, it had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, killing 1500 of the ship’s 2224 passengers and crew.
Titanic was one of three Olympic class ocean liners built at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast,  the other two being the RMS Britannic and the RMS Olympic.

The Olympic was launched a year before the Titanic but seemed to share its more famous sister ship’s poor luck.
Within months of its launch in 1911, it had had two serious collisions, the second with Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke off the coast of the Isle of Wight causing serious structural damage to the Olympic’s keel and steel beams.
Some authors have suggested that the damage to the Olympic was more serious than admitted. In fact, it was virtually a write-off.
Repairs would be ruinously expensive, running into millions of pounds. The already troubled White Star Line was facing a potential financial disaster.

Could White Star and its owner JP Morgan have devised an audacious insurance scam to try and salvage their investment in the troubled Olympic line?
The Olympic, the theory goes, would be swapped with the Titanic and sunk in a staged accident. The Titanic, now disguised as the Olympic, would then carry on in service.
The two ships were essentially identical save for minor differences and were moored side by side in dry dock;  the swap would entail nothing more elaborate that swapping a few nameplates and plaques.

Although not a new theory, Robin Gardiner popularised the insurance swap theory in his 1998 book ‘Titanic - The Ship That Never Sank?’
Could it really have been the Olympic that sank in the Titanic’s place?