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Many alternative stories to the sinking of the ocean liner have been put forward. The accepted reason for the sinking, which resulted in the death of 1,517 passengers and crew, is that the ship struck an iceberg at 11.40pm on 14 April 1912, buckling the hull plates allowing water to enter the ship's first five watertight compartments (one more than the ''Titanic'' was designed to survive), which resulted in her sinking two hours and 40 minutes later. Hypotheses which have been suggested as the cause of the disaster include unsafe speed, an insurance scam, an ice-pack rather than an iceberg, a conspiracy to murder opponents of a US central bank, and even a curse on the ship by the Unlucky Mummy. Further theories arose after a journalist had a heart attack whilst on board the 2012 commemorative cruise that followed the same journey 100 years later.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://wordswithmeaning.org/2012/04/titanic-curse-continues-memorial-cruise-turns-back-after-bbc-journalist-has-heart-attack/ )〕 ==Pack ice== In 2003, Captain L. M. Collins, a former member of the Ice Pilotage Service, published ''The Sinking of the Titanic: The Mystery Solved'' proposing, based upon his own experience of ice navigation and witness statements given at the two post-disaster enquiries, that what the ''Titanic'' hit was not an iceberg but low-lying pack ice. He based his conclusion upon three main pieces of evidence. #At 11.30pm on the night of the sinking, the two lookouts spotted what they believed to be haze on the horizon, extending approximately 20° on either side of the ship's bow, despite there being no other reports of haze at any time. Collins believes that what they saw was not haze but a strip of pack ice, ahead of the ship. #The ice was variously reported as high by the lookouts, high by Quartermaster Rowe on the poop deck, and only very low in the water by Fourth Officer Boxhall, on the starboard side near the darkened bridge. Collins believes that this was due to 'an optical phenomenon that is well known to ice navigators' where the flat sea and extreme cold distort the appearance of objects near the waterline, making them appear to be the height of the ship's lights, about above the surface near the bow, and high alongside the superstructure.〔Collins, 17–18〕 #A ship such as the ''Titanic'' turned by pivoting about a point approximately a third of the ship's length from the bow, with the result that with her rudder hard over, she could not have avoided crushing her entire starboard side into an iceberg were such a collision to occur, with the result that 'the hull and possibly the superstructure on the starboard side would have been rent. In all probability, the ship would have flooded, capsized, and sunk within minutes.'〔Collins, 24–25〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「RMS Titanic alternative theories」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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