So, was the ship that sank really the Titanic?

IT is the the most infamous disaster story in shipping history.

The "unsinkable" Southamp-ton liner Titanic went down in the freezing waters of the Atlantic Ocean with the loss of more than 1,500 lives on April 15, 1912.

Or did she?

A television documentary due to be screened tonight will investigate the possibility that the sinking was actually an insurance fraud and the ship that went down was really Titanic's crumbling sister ship Olympic.

Many of the passengers and crew aboard the massive liner were from Southampton. Could they all have been helpless victims of an elaborate corporate fraud?

Rumours were rife among the crew that Titanic and Olympic had been switched as part of an insurance swindle due to the poor state of Olympic.

Theorists claimed the identities of Titanic and Olympic were swapped when both were in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.

Geoff Whitfield, secretary of the British Titanic Society, is not convinced by the theory.

"It's a load of rubbish," he said. "I can't think of any reason why they should have changed the two ships.

"They're saying it was because Olympic was damaged, but she had been repaired by then. It would have taken a tremendous number of people to carry out the swap and you can't tell me no one was going to talk about it."

Milvina Dean, of Woodlands, near Southampton, who survived the sinking of Titanic as a nine-month-old baby, said historians she had spoken to about the swap theory had dismissed it as "a load of rot".

Some say there is evidence to support the swap theory.

The ship's owner, JP Morgan, was booked on for the maiden voyage but backed out at the last minute along with a number of other first class passengers, and Morgan's vast art collection, due to be shipped on the voyage, also failed to arrive in time.

Many of the crew who sailed the ship from Belfast to Southampton opted not to take the voyage across the Atlantic.

Other theories, which the programme presented by Danny Wallace will look into, include the crew attempting to stage a fake accident when a real, freak accident occurred.

Conspiracies, Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank, Sky One, 9pm 16th Sep 2004.