The sinking of the Titanic has long been tied to a conspiracy theory alleging that the ship’s owner, American financier J.P. Morgan, orchestrated the tragedy to eliminate three businessmen opposing the formation of the Federal Reserve. However, this baseless theory has been debunked by various sources. The meme claiming that Benjamin Guggenheim, Isidor Straus, and John Jacob Astor—all of whom died in the Titanic sinking—opposed the Federal Reserve and would be worth billions today is not supported by credible evidence.
The misinformation seemingly originated from previous memes mentioning J.P. Morgan, who owned the companies managing the Titanic but was not aboard the ship. These memes implied Morgan planned the disaster to eliminate the three prominent figures due to their alleged opposition to the Federal Reserve’s formation, established a year after the Titanic’s sinking in 1912.
George Behe, a respected Titanic expert, refuted this theory in a Reuters report from March 2021. Behe found no evidence that Guggenheim, Straus, or Astor opposed the Federal Reserve. He clarified that Astor had actually expressed support for the idea in a 1911 New York Times report. Experts widely agree that the Titanic’s sinking was a tragic accident caused by colliding with an iceberg on April 14, 1912, resulting in over 1,500 deaths.
Historian J. Kent Layton, known for his work on maritime history, including books on the Titanic, further dismissed the conspiracy theory. He explained that the theory doesn’t hold up logically, as the alleged plot to kill the three businessmen would have been improbable to execute given sightings of Guggenheim, Straus, and Astor during the disaster. Their actions during the sinking—such as Guggenheim discarding his lifebelt and Straus opting not to board a lifeboat with his wife—contradict the notion of a targeted plot against them. Layton emphasized that if the sinking were a conspiracy to eliminate these men, ensuring their deaths would have required locking them inside the ship, which wasn’t the case based on the available evidence.
The accounts of these experts, including Behe and Layton, discredit the conspiracy theory, affirming that the sinking of the Titanic was a tragic accident rather than a deliberate act orchestrated to target specific individuals.