Titanic Films by Mark

05/29/2026

https://youtu.be/ZtGw1M-3Ab4

Historic U.S. Navy footage showing the salvage efforts after the fo...

05/29/2026

https://youtu.be/qnlenaq38-M

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North At...

05/25/2026

A few years back, while I was still living in Southern California, I bought this original 1934 postcard on eBay.

At first glance, it shows the launch of what would become RMS Queen Mary. At the time, she had been known in the shipyard as Hull 534, the massive Cunard liner under construction at John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland.

On September 26, 1934, Hull 534 was launched and officially named Queen Mary by H.M. Queen Mary herself.

That already makes the postcard special.

But the back of the card is where the mystery begins.

This postcard was mailed from Nashville, Tennessee on October 24, 1934, less than a month after the launch. It was addressed to a man named Sam at 13 Oak Place in Portland, Tennessee.

The handwritten message is difficult to read, but it appears to be a family note from “Paul.” It mentions “Uncle Andy,” inviting them to come down, possibly coming on Sunday, writing ahead, and arranging to meet. In other words, an ordinary family message written on the back of an extraordinary ocean liner postcard.

That contrast is what I love.

On one side: Hull 534 becoming Queen Mary, one of the greatest Atlantic liners ever built.

On the other side: a 3-cent stamp, a Nashville postmark, a family note, and a small-town Tennessee address.

Portland, Tennessee was not New York, Southampton, or Clydebank. It was a small Tennessee town of roughly a thousand people in the mid-1930s. So how did a postcard of one of the largest ships in the world end up there?

Maybe it came through a Nashville shop, a railway station, or a newsstand. Maybe someone in the family followed the great Atlantic liners. Maybe Queen Mary’s launch was such big international news that postcards like this traveled far beyond the great ocean ports.

Then decades later, this little card somehow ended up for sale online, where I bought it while living in Southern California.

And now here is the strange part.

Years after buying it, I ended up living in Adamsville, Tennessee, only about two hours from Portland, where the postcard was originally sent.

A ship launched in Scotland.
A postcard mailed in Nashville.
A family note sent to Portland, Tennessee.
A collector finds it in California.
Then it ends up back in Tennessee, not far from where its journey once pointed.

History does not always stay in shipyards, archives, or museums. Sometimes it slips into a mailbox, rides the rails, crosses generations, disappears into private hands, and quietly circles back home.

Perhaps this was a God send.

05/21/2026

The RMS Olympic in repairs after the after the Hawke Collision

05/17/2026

Robin Gardiner’s Olympic/Titanic switch theory has always bothered me, not just because it is historically weak, but because it turned Titanic’s real tragedy into a long-running conspiracy business.

His book Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank? pushed the claim that Olympic and Titanic were secretly switched, and that the wreck on the ocean floor is actually Olympic. The problem is simple: the evidence does not support it.

Titanic and Olympic were not identical by the time Titanic sailed. Their B-deck arrangements were different, their interiors were different, and wreck evidence points to Titanic, not Olympic. Titanic was Harland & Wolff hull 401. Olympic was hull 400. Artifacts and wreck evidence tied to 401 are a major problem for the switch theory.

What makes it worse is that Gardiner himself later admitted that a key image connected to the theory was fake. In a July 2013 email, he said the photo supposedly showing the altered name on the wreck “was a fake.” That is not a small detail. That was one of the dramatic pieces used to feed the idea that the name on the wreck had been altered.

And yet the theory kept selling.

His book was republished, discussed on television, followed by more conspiracy material, released as an ebook, and even brought back in modern reissue form. The exact amount Gardiner personally made is not public because private royalty contracts are not public. But we can estimate the possible money using normal publishing math.

Using the often-repeated 250,000-copy sales claim, a documented £8.99 paperback price, and standard paperback royalty rates around 7.5% to 8%, the estimated raw book royalty range would be about:

£168,500 to £179,800

Adjusted into today’s buying power, that becomes roughly:

£266,000 to £284,000

Converted into U.S. dollars, that is approximately:

$358,000 to $382,000

That estimate does not include possible income from later editions, ebooks, foreign rights, reissues, documentary appearances, or television exposure. It also does not prove his exact paycheck. But it does show the obvious point: there was real money in keeping this theory alive.

Meanwhile, the theory itself falls apart under serious historical examination. The ships had known structural differences. The wreck matches Titanic. Hull number evidence points to Titanic. And the insurance-scam motive makes no sense when Titanic cost more to build than the insurance payout would have covered.

So while Titanic’s passengers and crew deserve sober history, this theory helped turn their disaster into a marketable conspiracy product.

Titanic was not switched.

Olympic did not secretly sink in her place.

The wreck is Titanic.

History deserves better than profitable fiction dressed up as investigation.

05/16/2026

The salvaged and restored Titanic whistle.

What did the RMS Titanic’s whistle actually sound like?Titanic’s original whistle was lost with the ship in 1912, but her sister ship RMS Olympic carried an ...

05/09/2026

Do you enjoy collecting Titanic collectibles? Here's a few of mine. The box contains coal from the Titanic. Comment below and let's share. Blessings

05/06/2026

SS Olympic entering Thompson Graving Dock at Queen’s Island, Belfast Harbour, on April 1, 1911.

This is not Olympic arriving at Queenstown, Southampton, or New York. This is Belfast, the city where she was built by Harland & Wolff for the White Star Line.

At this moment, Olympic had not yet begun her maiden voyage and had not yet entered regular Royal Mail service across the Atlantic, so “SS Olympic” is the safer caption here rather than “RMS Olympic.”

This photograph captures Olympic being carefully worked into Thompson Graving Dock, the massive dry dock built to handle the new Olympic-class liners. The ship looks incredibly close to the quay because she was. This was not an open harbor scene. She was being guided into a narrow dock entrance by lines, tugs, and shipyard crews.

The fit was tight. Olympic’s beam was about 92.5 feet, while the entrance to Thompson Dock was only about 96 feet wide. That left less than two feet of clearance on each side. The crowd was watching a giant ship being threaded through a stone-and-steel doorway with barely any room to spare.

Olympic was here for final underwater work before entering service. While she was in the dock, the rest of her hull below the waterline could be painted with anti-fouling paint and finished before her handover and sea trials.

The lifeboats are another important detail.

Look at the boat deck. This is Olympic before Titanic changed everything. You do not see the crowded post-1912 arrangement of extra lifeboats and davits. Olympic was still in her early pre-Titanic configuration, from a time when the regulations had not caught up with the size of the ships being built.

Olympic and Titanic would be completed with 20 boats: 14 standard lifeboats, 2 emergency cutters, and 4 collapsibles. It was legal at the time, but Titanic would prove that legal was not the same as safe.

After Titanic sank in April 1912, Olympic was brought back to Belfast for a major safety refit. Her lifeboat capacity was dramatically increased, eventually reaching 68 boats, with additional davits and other improvements. Later photos of Olympic show a very different boat deck.

That is what makes this image powerful.

This is Olympic before her Atlantic career.
Before Titanic.
Before the refits.
Before “Old Reliable.”

Here she is still the brand-new giant of Belfast, being edged into the very dock built for ships of her size, while crowds watched history pass within inches.

05/06/2026

My visit to the Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge

This video shows the Titanic Museum Attraction in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, one of the most unique museums dedicated to the history of RMS Titanic.The buildin...

04/24/2026

My Titanic film list from my Channel

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