LONDON, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- The real cause of the sinking of Titanic was not a collision with a giant iceberg, as commonly believed, but a fire that had weakened the liner's hull, a new documentary has claimed.
In "Titanic: the New Evidence", journalist Senan Molony, who has been researching the disaster for 30 years, held that a fire caused serious damage to Titanic's hull, which happened to be in the same area where the iceberg hit.
He believed that the fire had been raging in a coalbunker since the liner left the shipyard in Belfast, but wasn't noticed.
When the iceberg hit, the hull had been weakened by the blaze so much that a minor knock became an unimaginable disaster, said Molony.
The documentary, aired during the New Year on British television, presents pictures revealing dark marks on the starboard side of the ship as proof of a fire.
Titanic left Southampton, Britain, on April 10, 1912 to start her maiden voyage. It sank four days later after hitting an iceberg in the Atlantic, causing the loss of more than 1,500 lives.
