Great disasters always attract conspiracy theories and this is just as true of disasters at sea as it is of those on land or in the air. The sinkings of the Titanic and the Lusitania, two of the great maritime disasters of the twentieth century, have attracted more than their share of these theories. Was the sinking of the Titanic a plot by J. P. Morgan to remove opponents to his plan to create a US Federal Reserve Bank? Was the construction of the...