To this day, one of the greatest mysteries that came out of the sinking of the doomed oceanliner Titanic was what happened with the ship’s captain.
Now a new book of multiple accounts may shed some new light on what exactly happened with the captain of the ship.
Titanic Captain Edward John Smith’s official cause of death remains one of history’s enduring mysteries.
But author Dan E. Parkes has thrown cold water on multiple theories that he took his own life, claiming these rumors unfairly tarnished his legacy.
According to the Daily Mail, Parkes made these claims in his new book “Titanic Legacy: The Captain, the Daughter and the Spy,” which details eyewitness accounts from shipwreck survivors, who discuss, among other things, how Captain Smith met his end.
Here’s a snapshot of what readers can expect in the new book — and what Parkes says actually happened to the captain.
Over 1,500 people died when the RMS Titanic sank on April 14-15, 1912, following a collision with an iceberg in one of the most notorious maritime disasters in history.
Unfortunately, the British Naval Officer’s body was never recovered — only 337 ever were — spawning a wide range of explanations as to how he perished.
These ranged from accounts of him gallantly going down with the ship — as depicted in James Cameron’s 1997 movie “Titanic” — to conspiracy theories claiming that the legendary mariner was living in disguise in Maryland.
As author Wyn Craig Wade wrote in “The Titanic: End of a Dream,” Captain Smith — who was played by the late Bernard Hill in the film — “had at least five different deaths, from heroic to ignominious,” according to History.com.
The most heartbreaking theory of his death came just three days after the sinking, when the Los Angeles Express proclaimed on its front page: “Captain E.J. Smith shot himself.”
A day later, the UK’s Daily Mirror declared on its front page: “Captain Smith Shoots Himself on the Bridge.”
During inquiries into the maritime tragedy held in New York and London, survivors claimed they’d also heard rumors of the 62-year-old captain’s death.
Suicide was seen as a cowardly way to go out during a time when the captain was honor-bound to go down with the ship.
There were also controversial reports smearing Smith’s reputation when he was alive, alleging that he had an appetite for booze, was piloting the Titanic at an unsafe speed and also ignored warnings about the iceberg.
However, in the book Parkes labels these rumors unfounded character assassinations and claimed that the venerated captain drowned or froze to death in the North Atlantic with the other casualties.
Despite the abundance of eyewitness accounts of an officer suicide, the author believes that the official in question wasn’t Smith as he wasn’t named.
Parkes instead claims that the gunshots had been fired to calm panicking passengers, and traumatized voyagers assumed, without proof, that they were hearing the captain’s self-inflicted gunshot wound.
He pointed out that many of these eyewitnesses who claimed the latter were unreliable as they were on lifeboats that disembarked long before the Titanic’s final descent.