DNA solves one of Titanic's oldest mysteries

New Delhi: A team of 'Titanicologists' have solved what is considered to be of the Titanic's oldest mysteries or hoaxes of the doomed luxury liner, over a century after it sank. A woman who claimed to be the presumed-dead two-year-old daughter of a wealthy family that died on Titanic in 1912 has been exposed as a fraud following extensive DNA tests. When the massive ship struck an iceberg more than 100 years ago, it was believed that only one child from the first class died in the sinking ship: Loraine Allison. The 2-year-old apparently didn't get safely on a life boat because her parents were said to have been frantically searching for her little brother, who unbeknownst to them was already on a life boat. Allison and her mother's body were never found in the ship's wreckage. In 1940, 28 years after the Titanic went down, a woman named Helen Kramer appeared on a radio show claiming that she was Loraine Allison. She had an intricate story of being saved by the ship's designer and builder Thomas Andrews, who was also thought to have died on board. Kramer said she was raised in England before going to boarding school in the US. For more than 50 years, Kramer adamantly lobbied the wealthy Allison family trying to prove that she was kin. But, for the most part, the family was skeptical of Kramer's claims and held her at arm's length. The bitter dispute was expected to have ended in 1992 when Kramer died. But it was revived on the centenary of the sinking in 2012 when Kramer's granddaughter, Debrina Woods, from Florida, restated the claim on a series of forums dedicated to the Titanic. She set up a website highlighting her claim and said she planned to write a book about the story. She claimed she had found a suitcase belonging to her grandmother which was full of documents substantiating the family case. She also tried to contact the Allison family and arrange a visit, prompting the intervention of their lawyers to ask her to cease. A group of Titanic enthusiasts created the Loraine Allison Identification Project and persuaded a member of the Allison family and a relative of Kramer's to get DNA tested, according to The Telegraph. The results conclusively show there is no genetic relation between the two groups.