It has been 100 years since the world’s most famous maritime disaster. When the Titanic went down on her maiden voyage, the tragedy devastated one city in particular: Belfast.
For decades, the Titanic was a taboo topic in the Northern Ireland city.
But times have changed.
Belfast is now home to a new $150 million Titanic visitor centre, which opened Saturday.
A three-week festival featuring talks, walks and seven Titanic-themed stage shows – including “Titanic The Musical” – is underway at the new Titanic Belfast centre.
The facility’s roots run deep for some of the people working on it. “So many people working on the site say, ‘Oh my great grandfather was involved, he actually worked here,'” says Titanic Belfast architect Angus Waddington.
With about 15,000 workers were involved building the Titanic, most residents in Belfast have some sort of family connection.
Una Reilly’s great grandfather John crafted the ornate wood cabinets on the ship. He used the spare bits to create a chessboard. “It’s magnificent. It just shows you the skill and craftsmanship from the men who were building the biggest ship in the world.”
The iconic building sits beside the Belfast Lough dockside where the vessel was built from 1909 to 1911 and set sail for her sea trials on April 2, 1912. Titanic began her fateful maiden voyage from the English port of Southampton eight days later, striking an iceberg just before midnight April 14 and sinking within hours, killing 1,514 people.
The new visitor centre is trying to capture some of the Titanic’s glory, with a grand staircase and an opulent banquet hall. It appears to be working. Dozens of wedding receptions have already been booked there.
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A roller coaster-like ride takes visitors up and down three floors of a re-creation of the Harland & Wolff shipyards that made the ship for Liverpool’s White Star Line. It’s a panoramic tour suggesting the scale of the hull and the energy of the dock workers, all of them video projections of actors in period costumes. Those aboard can hear the commentary in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian or Chinese.
Next, visitors see a four-minute CGI tour (computer-generated imagery) of the finished Titanic, rising deck by deck, from engine room to the famed first-class cabin staircase made famous in James Cameron’s 1997 epic movie “Titanic.” In the same room are re-creations of first, second and third-class cabins, again with video projections of fictional passengers going into their bunks or getting ready for dinner.
There’s no skimping on historical detail for true maritime and Titanic junkies. Every available wall is plastered, in logical chronology, with details about every phase of construction, every firm and engineering speciality involved, and every part described from the ship’s four 7.3-metre-wide funnels to its six onboard pianos.
The ship’s voyage to Southampton, then to its other European ports of call in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, are also detailed in turn: The numbers and notables who boarded, their stories and tales of excitement about the voyage to New York ahead.
An entire wall is given over to a reprint of the final surviving photograph taken of Titanic on April 11, 1912, as she sailed away from Queenstown, the County Cork port today renamed Cobh.
Around the next corner, Titanic Belfast plunges into the disaster. A series of panels reprints the confused wireless messages among ships as Titanic appeals, minute by minute, for help from other vessels. The room is deliberately chilly as light projections create an image of dark lapping waters underfoot.
In the next section, visitors are invited to explore the stories of survivors and the final words of those who perished, most impressively by using interactive touch screens that link to family photos, diaries and related newspaper articles. Halifax’s role, in receiving 209 bodies buried in the town’s Protestant, Catholic and Jewish cemeteries is detailed.
The building’s exterior is also stunning: four jutting prows of the ship, lined in silver steel paneling, six storeys high.
Titanic Belfast’s marketing director, Claire Bradshaw, said the aim was to create an icon that people would come to associate with Belfast – like the Eiffel Tower for Paris or the Statue of Liberty for New York.
“And look, there is no shame in saying it. Belfast is in a changing time coming through the peace process, so it’s a rebirth of Belfast.”
The centre’s creation comes after years when Belfast avoided any mention of the Titanic and its tragic fate. The city built the ship that was deemed unsinkable. It sank. And residents did not want to advertise its biggest failure.
Residents have a saying here to dodge the subject: “Titanic was fine when she left.”
Tim Husbands, Titanic Belfast’s chief executive officer, says, “I think it took quite a number of decades before Belfast could come to terms with what was very obviously a tragic loss of life.”
Many of the victims were from the city – like ship doctor Jack Simpson. His great nephew, Dr. John Martin, bears an uncanny resemblance.
“So (my great uncle’s) training was pretty useless to him when the injuries happened,” says Martin. “Because the injuries happened right at the end when he would have been fighting for his own life.”
With Titanic’s legend once again anchored in the city of its birth, the epitaph on Dr. Simpson’s gravestone is today more relevant than ever. “‘Fortunate are ye both. No day shall erase you from the memory of time.'”
With files from Global National’s Stuart Greer and The Associated Press’s Shawn Pogatchnik
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