At the end of February 2023, information appeared in the Russian media and Telegram channels about the discovery of British researchers who allegedly discovered that the captain of the Titanic, Edward John Smith, was of Russian origin. We decided to check if this is true.
Since February 27, many Russian media have written about the sensational discovery of British scientists - for example, “Komsomolskaya Pravda" And RIA FAN. There are many mentions in popular Russian Telegram channels: “Guard"(25,000 views) and "Ukraine.ru"(123,000).
The first post mentioning the sensational discovery appeared on December 27 in the Telegram channel “Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation" The post contains a video, which is accompanied by the following text: “Hatred of Russians has reached new heights of idiocy today. Some eminent researchers in Britain found a Russian trace in the wreck of the Titanic. Turns out! Captain Edward Smith ACTUALLY was of Russian descent. His grandfather and his family fled from St. Petersburg to Britain. They even provide some documents to prove this. Ahaha. Now they want to reconsider the reasons for the crash, since the Russians, that’s why the Titanic sank, we are the source of all the problems in the world.”
In later publications, this text was changed, but the tone remained the same: the study is absurd and only confirms “European Russophobia.” "Komsomolskaya Pravda“At the same time, she turned to experts. The author of the book “Titanic,” Evgeny Nesmeyanov, told the publication that Edward Smith had no relation to Russia, and the Poles started the fake story about his Russian roots. Indeed, the video that began spreading the news about the Russian roots of the Titanic captain looks like an excerpt from a Polish media publication.
The video is accompanied by subtitles in Polish, and in the upper right corner is the NaTemat website logo. Archival photos are interspersed with excerpts from interviews with Samuel Halpern. At the same time, no words can be heard: the video only contains music and subtitles.
Samuel Halpern is one of the most famous researchers of the fate of the liner, which sank in 1912. By the way, he is not British, but American. Halpern wrote detailed book about the Titanic, in which he collected most of the available documents on this issue. But in this work there is not a word about the Russian origin of Captain Edward Smith. Biography of a pretty sailor studied in detail: it is known that he was born in 1850 in Hanley (Staffordshire, UK), and his father worked in the same city as a potter.
Therefore, the question arises as to why the Polish site published such a video. Website NaTemat actually exists, it is a news publication. Since the beginning of 2023, only one has been published there news about the Titanic, and there is not a word about the origin of the captain.
In some Telegram channels you can also find a link to an article in the Polish publication. Is it true, address natematpl.news differs from the original, although it leads to the main page of the NaTemat website. The link can only be found through cache "Yandex".
There really is an article, and it is signed Agnieszka Miastowska, by NaTemat. But it’s confusing that the website natematpl.news was created February 23, four days before the publication of a single article.
“Verified” sent a request to the editors of NaTemat and received the following response: “We checked, and [we can say that] this entry is definitely not from our site.”
Therefore, the article and video appear to have no connection to the Polish site NaTemat. The article was posted on a fake website specially created for this purpose, which redirected to the main page of the real website. In addition, the researcher (not British, but American) to whom the fake publication refers never said anything about the Russian origin of the Titanic captain. The only thing that remains unclear is the details of the biography of the captain’s grandfather: there is no information about this in the available sources.
Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons
Fake
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