At the end of February 2023, information about the opening of British researchers appeared in the Russian media and Telegram channels, who allegedly found that the captain of the Titanic Liner Edward John Smith was Russian in origin. We decided to check if this is so.
Since February 27, many Russian media have written about the sensational find of British scientists - for example, “Komsomolskaya Truth" And RIA Fan. There are many references in the popular Russian Telegram channels: ""Guard"(25,000 views) and"Ukraine.ru"(123,000).
The first post with the mention of a sensational opening appeared on December 27 in the Telegram channel "Before everyone else. Well, almost. Special operation". The post contains a video that is accompanied by the following text: “Hatred of Russians today has reached new heights of idiocy. Some eminent researchers in Britain found a Russian trace in the crash of the Titanic. Turns out! Captain Edward Smith was actually Russian. His grandfather and his family flew out of St. Petersburg to Britain. Even some documents lead to evidence of this. Ahaha. Now they want to reconsider the causes of the crash, since the Russians, that’s why the Titanic sank, we are the source of all problems in the world. ”
In later publications, this text was changed, but the tonality remained the same: the study is absurd and only confirms the “European Russophobia”. "Komsomolskaya Truth"At the same time, she turned to the experts. The author of the Titanic book Evgeny Nesmeyanov told the publication that Edward Smith had nothing to do with Russia, and the Poles launched a fake about his Russian roots. And in fact, the video from which the spread of news about the Russian roots of the captain of the Titanic began, looks like an excerpt from the publication of the Polish media.
The video is accompanied by subtitles in Polish, and in the upper right corner there is a NATEMAT website logo. Archival photos are interspersed with excerpts from an interview with Samuel Halpern. At the same time, there are no words: in the video there are only music and subtitles.
Samuel Halpern is one of the most famous researchers of the fate of the liner who sank in 1912. By the way, he is not a Briton, but an American. Halpern wrote A 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. The biography of the sailor is enough studied in detail: It is known that he was born in 1850 in the city of Hanley (Staffordshire, Great Britain), and his father worked In the same city, Gonchar.
Therefore, the question arises why the Polish site published such a video. Website NATEMAT It really exists, this is a news edition. Since the beginning of 2023, only one news About the Titanic, and there is not a word about the origin of the captain.
In some Telegram channels you can find a link to an article in a Polish edition. 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 Agnieshki Mystovskaya, author NATEMAT. But it confuses that the site NATEMATPL.News was created February 23, four days before the publication of the only article.
“Verified” sent a request to the NATEMAT editorial office and received the following answer: “We checked, and [we can say that] this record is definitely not from our site.”
Thus, the article and video, apparently, have nothing to do with the Polish NATEMAT site. The article was posted on a specially created for this forged site, which redirected the present page of the site of the present. In addition, the researcher (not British, but American), which is referred by the fake publication, never said anything about the Russian origin of the captain of the Titanic. The only thing that remains unclear is the details of the biography of the captain’s grandfather: there is no information about this in accessible sources.
Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons
Fake
- Is it true that Hitler had Jewish roots?
- Is it true that the Slavs are the ancestors of the British?
- Is it true that the multimillionaire Alfred Vanderbilt, miraculously not getting to the Titanic, later died at Luzitania?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please inform us of this, highlighting the text with an error and by pressing Ctrl+Enter.
