Made in Belfast
Built in 1912, the Titanic is one of Belfast’s best known exports, and has come to symbolise the regeneration of the city
Words: Kevin Pilley
The RMT Titanic – built in Belfast’s Harland and Woolf shipyard – has become a symbol of the city’s regeneration. Today, tours, a science park, leisure complex, restaurants and bars provide plenty of entertainment for visitors who arrive in the wake of the most famous ship that ever sailed
MY BINOCULARS WERE focused directly over the bow of our small vessel, with Captain Derek Brooker at the helm, as we quietly approached the birthplace of a legend. Built in three years and originally going by the prosaic name of Order 401, the Titanic left Southampton at 12.15pm on 10 April in 1912, just 10 days after her launch. To mark the significance of this moment, Southampton will be staging a series of commemorative events on 14 and 15 April. But the biggest celebration is held in Belfast. From 7 to 14 April the city will stage its sixth Titanic Made in Belfast Festival, with walking, bus and boat tours to various Titanic-related places of interest around the city. And the centrepiece is the Titanic Dinner at the City Hall. Guests will be donning Edwardian dress and music of the early 19th century will Wharf that the city’s most famous daughter sailed out of Belfast for the first and last time.
“They connect us with what Belfast once was,” said Toms, from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His grandfather lost his life in the world’s most famous maritime disaster. Toms is a self-confessed Titanic-aholic. He owns a period shipwright’s tool box and an authenticated cabin door that did not make it on board. We chugged past HMS Caroline – the last World War One cruiser still afloat – and saw the wharves where Titanic had her superstructure fitted. Toms kept up his running commentary along with the official one on board the Joyce Too, our former Royal Navy tender, nowadays requisitioned for Titanic sightseeing cruises. “In the 1760s the area produced iron pots as well as steam engines to power the local linen mills and stoves to dry tea leaves.”
It was indeed a different era. Queen’s Island was a pleasure garden with its own zoo and a Crystal Palace. In 1861, with the formation of Harland and Woolf, Belfast became the largest single-owned shipyard in the world, employing 30,000 people and producing magnificent ships such as the Olympic, Oceanic and Germanic.
“The Titanic continues to fascinate even after 95 years,” says Una Reilly, chairperson and co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society, which has over 200 members. Her great-grandfather worked as a cabinetmaker in the yards and the family owns a chessboard made out of scraps of Titanic wood. “It is a story that contains so many different aspects of human nature. She was only on the world stage for 13 days. What happened to the Titanic was a disaster but she was not. As one Belfast wag said: ‘She was all right when she left here.’”
And every April they celebrate the building of the then biggest man-made moving object on the planet. The site for the dinner, the City Hall, is known locally as the Stone Titanic. It was built around the same time and reflects some of the ship’s grandeur. On the anniversary of the actual sinking, the city holds a wreath-laying ceremony at the city’s Titanic Memorial. There is also a commemorative bust of Viscount Pirrie, the Lord Mayor of Belfast and a director of Harland and Woolf.
The Titanic was designed by Thomas Andrews. The doomed ship was a sixth of a mile long and as high as Belfast’s Albert Memorial Clock. On 2 April she sailed for Southampton before going on to Queenstown, Cork. Shortly before midnight on Sunday 14 April 1,503 people, 35,000 eggs, 6,820 litres of milk, 40 tonnes of potatoes, £20m worth of millionaires, a swimming pool, Turkish bath and squash court all perished. The wreck was found in 1985.
Organised Titanic tours of Belfast take in the permanent exhibition at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra.
Enthusiasts venture out to Comber to see the memorial to Thomas Andrews as well as the grave of John Edward Simpson, the ship’s surgeon, at Bangor Abbey. The legendary ship has now become a symbol of its birthplace’s regeneration. The Titanic Quarter.
in the east of the city is Europe’s largest mixed-use waterfront development and is already the home of the Northern Ireland Science Park and organisations such as Microsoft and Citigroup. The Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education has announced plans to locate a new £44m campus there by 2009. The first phase of the Abercorn residential complex will be launched in early 2007, offering 475 apartments.
Most locals are a font of Titanic knowledge and trivia and the facts are endless: the ship had kennels, 159 furnaces, its fourth funnel was a dummy, 703 people were saved, the first-class passengers paid £2,800 compared to £22 steerage, 825 tonnes of coal were burned daily and the rudder weighed 110 tonnes. She was held together by three million rivets, albeit temporarily.
“You can still see the building where the ship was designed,” said Toms. “Some people are obsessive about the Titanic. I know someone whose pride and joy is a piece of coal he swears comes from her. We get fanatics, fans of the films, relatives of people who died on board and those who survived and relatives of people who worked in the yards coming back to pay their respects. Titanic fans are all sorts.”
Another passenger chips in: “Did you know that Harland and Woolf had a resident masseuse and that one of the Titanic’s tenders is now a floating restaurant on the Seine?” The Harbour Commissioner’s Office was pointed out. It houses the original Captain’s table, which arrived too late to be put on board. The interest in Titanic is as great as ever and Titanic memorabilia fetches huge sums. A first-class menu was sold for £32,000. The SOS telegram to the Carpathia fetched £20,000. There will be an auction of artefacts after they have been exhibited at the 2007 Titanic Made in Belfast Festival. The movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio is still the biggest grossing film of all time, taking over $1 billion. “Despite the tragedy we are all proud of the Titanic,” said Toms, as we headed off towards the old Hard Rock Café, now called The Titanic Bar & Grill. “It put Belfast on the map.”
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AN UNSINKABLE LEGACY
TITANIC-RELATED TOURS AND EVENTS IN BELFAST AND SOUTHAMPTON
BELFAST
Titanic Boat Tour: +44
(0)28 9033 0844; www..laganboatcompany.com (tour lasts 75 minutes and costs £7 for adults, £6 concession or £20 per family)
Titanic Trail: +44 (0)28 9024 6609; www.gotobelfast.com Titanic Quarter: www..titanicquarter.com (for information and tickets for the Titanic Dinner, call +44
(0)28 9147 0029 or email titanic401@nireland.com) Further information about Maritime Belfast and its Titanic connections: www.discovernorthern.ireland.com Belfast Welcome Centre: +44 (0)28 9024 6609 Titanic Made in Belfast Festival: www.gotobelfast. com (events begin in March and run through to April) The W5 Titanic At Home Exhibition: www.nitb.com (10 March – 1 May) An exhibition not only about the ship but the city, the construction and the people that were involved in its creation. There are four dramatic reconstructions that will re-tell the tales of the building and the voyage of the Titanic. The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum: +44
(0)28 9042 8428; www..uftm.org.uk (a year-round Titanic Exhibition with vintage photographs, recordings, newsreels and music)
SOUTHAMPTON
For further information about Southampton’s Titanic events, contact the City’s Tourist Information Centre on +44 (0)23 8083 3333 or email tourist.information@southampton.gov.uk As well as a White Star exhibition, the city’s Maritime Museum will open a special Titanic Gallery as 550 victims of the disaster were from Southampton. The city has a Titanic Trail, including the crew memorial in Holyrood Church and the Engravers’ Memorial in East Park. The lookout, Frederick Fleet, is buried in Hollybrook. When the city’s first public museum opened in 1912, Captain Smith’s Royal Navy Reserve sword was presented by his widow, Eleanor.
