It is sometimes difficult to sort the truth from the rumors, since the accounts by survivors are notoriously contradictory, and some seemingly impossible events appear to be factual. For example, Joughin, the ship's baker, is said to have climbed out onto the poop-deck rail and held on as the ship's stern rose out of the water and then sank. He followed the ship down to the water-level, and was later pulled into a boat with his hair still dry. Anothe rumor was that the Captian E.J. Smith was seen helping a child into a lifeboat after the sinking and then swimming off into the distance. this however contridicts the testamony from the surviving crew members who said the Captain was last seen entering the bridge shortly before it was submerged below the icy waters. But if the truths were sometimes strange, the fictions certainly rival them. Walter Lord reported that after "A NIGHT TO REMEMBER" was published in 1955, he received several letters from Ireland explaining the "real" reason that Titanic sank. Purportedly, the hull number assigned to Titanic as it was being built in Belfast, 390904, had a secret meaning. If you hand-write this number making the '4' rather angular and exaggerated, add a space, and then hold it up to a mirror, it seems to spell "No Pope." Clearly, the letters opined, the Ulster Protestants who built Titanic had assigned her this coded message on purpose, and divine retribution had ensued.

One legendary relic from the disaster was a violin which, according to marine historian John Maxtone-Graham, circulated for years through auction houses, touted as the instrument used to entertain and calm the passengers on the boat deck as Titanic sank. Since none of the musicians were saved, its provenance seems doubtful. One persistent "myth" eventually proved to be the truth. Survivors disagreed on the fate of the ship itself. Some asserted that the ship had broken in two, while others insisted it hadn't. The "authoritative" writers sided with the latter group for decades. Col. Gracie, in his 1912 book, flatly discounted 17-year-old Jack Thayer's account that it broke in half, suggesting instead that Thayer merely witnessed the forward funnel falling. John Maxtone-Graham, writing in 1972, was similarly dismissive of Thayer's account. It was only after the wreck was discovered in 1985, in two sections lying 1/3 of a mile apart on the ocean floor, that the accepted "fact" of Titanic's end was altered to conform with what Jack Thayer saw.