Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.
Weekly Update
As I mentioned last week, my output for the blog might slow a little over the coming weeks. This might take the form of slightly shorter posts, or even microblogs from time to time. This week, though, I’ve just about managed to put a sizable post out there.
My second week in my new self-employed venture has been a positive one. I can feel my confidence coming back after a horrific experience in my last place of work. I’m trying to not get too ahead of myself, but I’m feeling pretty optimistic about this new role and I’m hoping I’ve found a home of sorts for the rest of my FI journey.
Another part of life which is pretty positive right now is Sheffield Wednesday F.C. Most readers will know I’m an Owls fan, and we’ve had a tough few years. Under new ownership we are flying, sitting at the top of League One after five matches.
On Saturday Oana and I had a date night, where we went for some food at Peddler Market and then to the cinema to watch The End of Oak Street. The movie was absolutely ridiculous but great entertainment, but that’s what you get when you send families from the 1980s back to the age of dinosaurs.
This Week on The AFI Podcast
In episode five of AFI: The Autism and Financial Independence Podcast, we look at how some seemingly small decisions can have a surprisingly large impact over the long term.
In my financial segment, I explore survivorship bias in investing and why focusing only on the investments, companies or success stories that made it can give us a badly distorted picture of reality.
We then look at wants versus needs through the example of two people starting from almost identical financial positions. Small differences in the choices they make, whether that’s spending more on the latest phone or a more expensive car, or choosing a cheaper alternative and investing the difference, can compound into dramatically different outcomes over the years. It’s not about never spending money on things you enjoy; it’s about recognising the long-term cost of the choices we make today.
On the autism side of the podcast, Darren tackles a deceptively simple question: what is autism? He explores what we actually mean when we talk about autism and helps cut through some of the misconceptions surrounding it.
As always, we bring the two sides of AFI together: understanding autism, understanding money, and using both to build greater independence.
Check out the AFI section of this site for links to the pod on the various platforms.
What I’m Doing
Listening: Life Without Diabetes by Professor Roy Taylor.
Watching: For All Mankind (Apple).
Reading: Abaddon’s Gate (Expanse Book 3) by James S. A. Corey.
Financial Update
Assets
Premium Bonds: £250.00.
Stocks and Shares ISA: £152,412.60.
Fuck It Fund: £0.00.
Pensions: £128,454.09.
Residential Property Value: £245,790.00.
Total Assets: £526,906.69.
Debts
Residential Mortgage: £173,281.83.
Total Debts: £173,281.83.
Total Wealth
Total Wealth: £353,624.86.
Top Ten Funniest/Most Crazy Conspiracy Theories
10. Flat Earth
9. Hollow Earth
8. The Mandela Effect
Titanic Was Swapped With Olympic
It’s time for another instalment in my completely unordered tour through some of the world’s most batshit conspiracy theories.
So far we’ve discovered that the Earth is apparently flat, while simultaneously being hollow, and that CERN may have accidentally transported us into a parallel universe where the Monopoly Man has misplaced his monocle.
This week, we’re heading back to 1912, because apparently the Titanic didn’t sink.
Well, to be clear, a ship definitely sank and more than 1,500 people died.
But according to one enduring conspiracy theory, the enormous passenger liner lying at the bottom of the North Atlantic isn’t actually RMS Titanic.
It’s her older sister: RMS Olympic.
So, what about the actual Titanic?
According to the theory, Titanic and Olympic were secretly swapped as part of an enormous insurance fraud.
At which point I imagine somebody at White Star Line saying:
“I’ve got an idea. Hear me out.”
First, we need two enormous fucking ships
To understand where this conspiracy comes from, we need to go back a little.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, White Star Line commissioned three enormous Olympic-class ocean liners from the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
They were Olympic, Titanic and Britannic.
Olympic was the first, and Titanic followed, and because they were sister ships built to broadly the same design, Olympic and Titanic looked extremely similar.
Not identical, mind you, but similar enough that if you’re looking for the foundations of a conspiracy theory 100 years later, you’ve already got something to work with.
Olympic entered service in 1911 and promptly had an accident.
HMS Hawke enters the story
In September 1911, Olympic collided with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke near the Isle of Wight.
The collision caused significant damage to Olympic and she returned to Belfast for repairs.
This is where conspiracy theorists start rubbing their hands together, because the accident was expensive. Olympic was temporarily out of service and repairs cost money. Also, there were disputes surrounding responsibility for the collision.
The conspiracy theory claims White Star Line therefore found itself with a badly damaged ship representing a major financial problem.
At this point, someone supposedly came up with a solution.
Not: Repair Olympic.
Not: Absorb the financial loss.
Not: Make an insurance claim where possible and continue operating the ship.
No. Apparently the solution was:
SECRETLY SWAP TWO OF THE LARGEST SHIPS ON EARTH AND THEN SINK ONE OF THEM.
I admire the ambition and the escalation of thought. Much like the previous entry on the Mandela Effect. Am I misremembering something? No, we’ve jumped realities. Ok, then.
The Great Switch
According to the conspiracy, Olympic returned to the Harland & Wolff shipyard where Titanic was still being completed and because the two ships looked so similar, White Star Line supposedly switched their identities.
The damaged Olympic became Titanic.
The real Titanic became Olympic.
Then the former Olympic, now pretending to be Titanic, would embark on Titanic’s maiden voyage. Somewhere along the journey, the ship would be deliberately lost, and White Star Line would collect the insurance money.
Problem solved, except for several thousand minor details we’ll come to shortly.
The actual Titanic, meanwhile, would continue operating under Olympic’s identity.
So the conspiracy isn’t simply: Titanic was deliberately sunk.
It’s:
Two gigantic ocean liners were secretly swapped, hundreds or thousands of people either participated or somehow failed to notice, one was deliberately sent towards destruction, the plan somehow involved passengers, and the surviving vessel then continued operating for another couple of decades without anyone conclusively exposing the switch.
Already, Occam’s razor is nervously reaching for a drink.
But they looked identical!
This is one of the pillars of the theory. Olympic and Titanic were sister ships. They looked extremely similar. Therefore, swapping them would supposedly have been relatively straightforward.
Except there’s a slight problem: They weren’t identical, and there were visible differences between them.
One of the most obvious involved sections of the promenade decks. Titanic had portions enclosed that differed from Olympic’s original configuration.
There were also differences in windows, internal arrangements and other details.
Now, could you modify ships? Of course. Ships are altered throughout their lives. In fact, Olympic herself underwent modifications.
But every alteration required to disguise one ship as another makes the conspiracy more complicated, not less.
You don’t just sail Olympic into Belfast on Monday evening, peel off the badge and send her back out Tuesday morning wearing a fake moustache and a baseball cap.
These were enormous machines assembled from millions of components.
And crucially, they were built by people. Lots of people.
Imagine trying to keep this secret in a shipyard
This is where the theory starts becoming hilarious to me. Titanic and Olympic were built at Harland & Wolff in Belfast. Thousands of workers were involved in constructing the Olympic-class liners, including;
Shipbuilders. Engineers. Riveters. Electricians. Carpenters. Painters. Designers. Supervisors. Managers, and Inspectors.
And these weren’t people looking at two ships from half a mile away thinking:
“Yeah, they look pretty similar.”
They were building the bloody things.
Imagine working for months fitting part of Titanic. You know where things are and you know what you’ve installed. You know the differences between the vessels.
Then you come into work one morning.
“Morning, Dave.”
“Morning.”
“Just so you know, that’s Olympic now.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
And apparently nobody thinks this is worth mentioning.
Then there are the construction numbers
Here’s where physical evidence becomes particularly inconvenient.
The ships had yard numbers.
Olympic was yard number 400.
Titanic was yard number 401.
These identifiers weren’t merely names painted conveniently on the side of the hull. Construction numbers were associated with components during manufacture. Evidence recovered from Titanic’s wreck has been associated with the number 401, consistent with the ship at the bottom of the Atlantic actually being Titanic.
Now, committed conspiracy theorists can obviously respond: They changed the numbers!
Fine, but notice what’s happening. Every time evidence contradicts the switch, we add another requirement to the conspiracy.
They swapped the ships, altered visible features, and they changed identifying details.
Workers kept quiet. Documentation was manipulated. Physical components were presumably altered, and we’re still only getting started.
Why deliberately sink it?
The supposed motivation was insurance fraud.
White Star Line allegedly had a financially compromised Olympic and needed a way to recover its value.
So the company supposedly intended to sink the vessel while it masqueraded as Titanic and collect the insurance payout.
There’s a rather significant problem with this.
From what I can tell, Titanic wasn’t insured for more than she was worth.
The vessel was insured for a substantial amount, but losing Titanic wasn’t some magical financial jackpot where White Star Line could destroy an asset and emerge swimming through a vault of gold like Scrooge McDuck.
Even putting that aside, deliberately sinking a huge passenger liner is a spectacularly dangerous way of committing insurance fraud.
You’re risking:
- Passengers.
- Crew.
- The reputation of White Star Line.
- Potential criminal investigations.
- Government inquiries.
- Lawsuits.
- The destruction of an enormously valuable vessel.
- And the possibility that one of the thousands of people involved opens their mouth.
There must have been easier ways to balance the books.
Ah, but nobody was supposed to die
Some versions of the conspiracy recognise the obvious problem that intentionally murdering 1,500 people is quite a substantial escalation from insurance fraud.
So the theory evolves.
The ship was supposedly meant to suffer an incident that would allow everyone to be rescued.
Perhaps another vessel would be nearby and the damaged ship would sink.
Passengers would transfer safely and White Star Line would receive its insurance money.
Everyone goes home and pats themselves on the back for a job well done. Lovely.
Unfortunately, an iceberg then somehow ruined the carefully planned fake disaster by creating a real disaster.
Which raises another question: If you’re deliberately planning to sink an enormous ship in a controlled insurance scam…
Why the hell are you steaming through an area where ice has been reported?
It’s like planning to fake a minor car accident for an insurance claim and deciding the ideal venue is the middle lane of the M1 at 70mph.
J.P. Morgan cancelled his trip!
Now we arrive at one of the conspiracy world’s favourite ingredients:
Somebody important changed their plans.
J.P. Morgan’s business interests controlled White Star Line through the International Mercantile Marine Company.
Morgan had reportedly intended to travel aboard Titanic but cancelled, and this naturally becomes evidence that he knew.
Except people cancel journeys and rich people change plans.
Plans made months in advance don’t always happen.
If Morgan had boarded Titanic and survived, that would probably be evidence too, but if he’d boarded and died, someone would presumably claim he was silenced.
That’s one of the wonderful things about conspiracy reasoning.
Once you’ve decided somebody is involved, virtually every possible outcome can be interpreted as confirmation.
Cancelled? He knew.
Travelled but survived? He was protected.
Died? He knew too much.
At no point does the theory have to face the terrifying possibility that sometimes people change their travel arrangements.
But what about the people who supposedly knew?
This is where we return to one of my favourite conspiracy questions.
How many people need to keep quiet? The switch couldn’t realistically be known only to a handful of White Star Line executives. People would have to physically modify the vessels.
Then, records would potentially need changing. Shipyard managers would know.
Workers performing modifications would notice. Then, we have the officers, crew, and the engineers.
People involved with insurance might start asking questions.
Then there’s the fact the surviving Olympic supposedly continues sailing until 1935.
That’s more than two decades during which the “real Titanic“, according to the conspiracy, was wandering around pretending to be Olympic.
Yet none of the thousands of people involved conclusively exposes it.
Once again, conspiracy theorists apparently have considerably more faith in humanity’s ability to organise large projects than I do.
The wreck causes another slight inconvenience
Titanic’s wreck was discovered in 1985 and since then it has been extensively photographed, filmed and studied.
The wreckage is consistent with Titanic. Various identifiable features and construction details correspond with the vessel known to have been built as Titanic.
Again, this doesn’t stop the theory.
If you’ve already accepted that White Star Line successfully altered the ships, records and identifying characteristics in 1911, then physical evidence can simply become another part of the cover-up.
Which brings us back to the same problem we’ve encountered repeatedly in this series.
What evidence would actually convince someone the conspiracy was wrong?
If the answer is “nothing”, then we’re no longer investigating a hypothesis.
We’re protecting a conclusion.
The real Titanic story doesn’t need a conspiracy
And this is what I find strange about the Olympic switch theory: The actual story of Titanic is already extraordinary.
One of the largest and most luxurious ships in the world leaves Southampton on her maiden voyage. She receives warnings about ice, and late on 14 April 1912, she strikes an iceberg.
The collision damages multiple watertight compartments and the ship’s design means flooding eventually overwhelms the vessel.
There aren’t enough lifeboat spaces for everyone aboard. Confusion and disbelief affect the evacuation. Titanic sinks in the early hours of 15 April.
More than 1,500 people die.
The disaster subsequently influences maritime safety regulations, lifeboat requirements and ice monitoring.
That’s an incredible historical story and you don’t need to secretly swap the ships.
And the boring explanation actually explains more
Let’s apply Occam’s razor again.
Explanation A:
Titanic was Titanic.
Olympic was Olympic.
Olympic had previously been damaged and repaired.
Titanic subsequently struck an iceberg during her maiden voyage and sank.
The wreck lying on the seabed is Titanic.
Explanation B:
White Star Line secretly swapped two enormous ocean liners.
The company disguised Olympic as Titanic.
Titanic was disguised as Olympic.
Numerous physical differences were modified.
Identifying information was changed.
A large number of workers either participated or failed to notice.
The disguised Olympic was deliberately sent on a voyage where it was supposed to be lost for insurance purposes.
The plan went catastrophically wrong.
The real Titanic then spent more than twenty years operating as Olympic.
Nobody involved produced convincing evidence exposing the operation.
And when the wreck was eventually discovered, identifying evidence conveniently supported the official story anyway.
I’m struggling here.
There’s one thing I genuinely like about this conspiracy
Unlike Flat Earth, I can understand why the Titanic switch theory hooks people.
There was another extremely similar ship.
Olympic was damaged before Titanic’s maiden voyage.
Both ships were owned by the same company.
They were together at the same shipyard.
A powerful businessman associated with the company did cancel plans to travel aboard Titanic.
Those are real ingredients.
Put them together in the right order, leave out inconvenient details, ask enough suggestive questions and suddenly you’ve got the beginnings of something that feels suspicious.
And that’s worth remembering.
Good conspiracy theories rarely consist entirely of invented information.
They’re often constructed from real facts connected by unsupported conclusions.
That’s what gives them power.
“Did you know Olympic was badly damaged?”
Yes.
“Did you know Titanic was incredibly similar?”
Yes.
“Did you know they were both in Belfast?”
Yes.
“Did you know J.P. Morgan cancelled his Titanic trip?”
Yes.
“Therefore they secretly swapped the ships and sank Olympic for the insurance money.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa, we’ve skipped a few steps there, mate.
I almost want this one to be true as well
I’ll admit something.
Like Hollow Earth, there’s a tiny part of me that would enjoy discovering the switch actually happened.
Not because of the tragedy. More than 1,500 people died, and nothing about that deserves to be trivialised.
But purely as a historical revelation?
Imagine discovering that one of the most famous ships in human history wasn’t actually the ship we thought it was.
It would be astonishing.
Historians would lose their minds.
Museums would need rewriting.
Every Titanic documentary made over the last century would suddenly require an extremely awkward sequel.
And somewhere, the ghost of a Harland & Wolff worker would presumably be sitting there thinking:
“FINALLY. I’ve been trying to tell you idiots.”
But wanting a story to be interesting isn’t evidence.
And unfortunately for the Olympic switch theory, the boring explanation fits the available evidence considerably better.
Olympic was damaged and was repaired.
Titanic was built, sailed, hit an iceberg, and sank.
Olympic continued operating until the 1930s.
No elaborate plan involving deliberately sacrificing one of the world’s largest passenger liners. Just one of history’s most famous maritime disasters.
Which, when you think about it, should really be dramatic enough.
But apparently an enormous supposedly unsinkable ship hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage and disappearing beneath the North Atlantic wasn’t interesting enough for us.
We had to swap the ships as well.
DISCLAIMER
The views and opinions in this blog are my own, and do not represent the views or opinions of my former, current, or future employers, nor should they be considered advice.
If you want personalised financial advice, seek an appropriate professional. If you are in financial difficulty, seek advice via the resources below:
Biolink
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bio.link/davidscothern.