My wife and I have just returned from a cruise round the British Isles and Ireland calling in at a number of locations that we could probably not see any other way. Most interesting of these was Belfast where as well as touring the city we visited Titanic Belfast which was only opened in 2012. In just 10 years it has become one of the top 10 visitor attractions in the world. It celebrates ‘The Ship Magnificent’ but also the hundreds of other ships built in Belfast and indeed much more than just shipbuilding. Some might question that a visitor attraction would appear to be focused on what was an appalling disaster, but indeed the people of Belfast are proud of the ship they built which was then the largest in the world. As far as they’re concerned, she left Belfast in perfect working order. Many lessons were learnt from the disaster and although far too many people lost their lives it is quite possible to believe that the lives of many more were saved in the future from the lessons that were learnt.

Titanic Belfast is the centrepiece of the new Titanic Quarter which has established a vital waterfront community including progressive mixed-use development along the river Lagan with homes, shops, hotels, offices, entertainment, education and cultural amenities. The building of Titanic Belfast is a remarkable structure with echoes of the ships that were constructed in this very space. As well as the exhibition floor there are private function rooms for any occasion; offering elegant surroundings in a unique design based on Titanic interiors. Other floors include the schools’ education centre while exhibition galleries begin on the first floor, connected by timber-decked balcony walkways beside walls inscribed with the names of former Harland and Wolff vessels.

After the Great Famine that ravaged Ireland in the 1840s, people flooded into Belfast to find work in the new linen mills, the docks, the shipyards and a range of successful and interconnected industries that employed large workforces. The decline of the rural economy coincided with growing prosperity in Belfast. Between 1851 and 1901, the city’s population increased from 87,000 to nearly 350,000. At the time, Belfast was the fastest growing city in the British Empire.

The core business was the linen trade. Flax has been used to make linen for thousands of years. It was grown in the countryside along with foodstuffs. Turning it into linen was traditionally a cottage industry. With industrialisation the linen trade began to be centred around Belfast. By 1900 Belfast was producing and exporting more linen than anywhere else in the world. At that time 65,000 people worked in the mills in Ireland. Most of these were in Belfast. It had become the largest and most important prosperous commercial manufacturing city in Ireland. With other industries related to each other, for example the ropeworks supplied the shipyards, and textile engineering firms supplied machinery to the linen mills. Other industries that developed at this time included tobacco with two large tobacco firms in Belfast – Murray’s and Gallaher’s. Musgrave & Co supplied luxury stoves and there were several whiskey manufacturing firms responsible for over half the total whiskey exports from Ireland.  There was a large soft drinks industry but most important were the docks that were the largest in Ireland and were crucial for the import of raw materials for industry and the export of products to the world.

In 1854, Robert Hickson employed Edward Harland as manager of his shipbuilding yard. Three years later, Harland employed Gustav Wolff as his assistant. Hickson sold his company to Edward Harland and in 1861 Harland and Wolff agreed their partnership. The firm quickly gained a reputation for constructing high quality ships. They combined new technologies with innovative naval architecture.

High levels of European emigration and the growth of American trade resulted in a soaring demand for new ships. By 1870, Harland and Wolff began their long and profitable relationship with Thomas Ismay’s White Star line. Until the First World War they built all but one of White Star’s ships. William James Pirrie, later Lord Pirrie and J Bruce Ismay produced the first concept sketches and design ideas for the Olympic class ships. They planned to build a ship that would balance speed with quality of accommodation. The Olympic class ships would be 882 feet and 9 inches long (271 m) and to do so needed a gantry of enormous proportions and you can still see the poles of the gantry where the Olympic and the Titanic and the Britannic were built.

The building of Titanic began in 1909 which started with the keel which was 6 feet high. Thomas Andrews was Managing Director in charge of design who was to go down with the ship. The next stage was to fit the rudder, then framing the erection of steel rib like structures that form the skeleton of the ship. Then came the plating and riveting holding Titanic’s skin in place. Altogether, over 3 million rivets were used on Titanic. Good quality riveting is essential as it held the structure together. There were 15 watertight bulkheads that ran across Titanic in the lower decks. Titanic was designed to stay afloat if up to two of her four forward compartments were flooded but they were only watertight up to a certain level because crew and passengers needed doors to access parts of the ship.

On 31 May 1911, Titanic was launched from her slipway into Belfast Lough. The launch was attended by many important guests and was also witnessed by an estimated 100,000 people gathered on the banks. At this stage Titanic was like an empty shell; it had not yet been fitted with passenger accommodation, equipment and machinery including engines, boilers, funnels or propellers.

The fitting out of Titanic took more than 3000 men 10 months to complete. Titanic had a very complicated internal layout. This was due to the separation of different passenger classes and the need for crew to access all parts of the ship. She carried various types of communication equipment. Her powerful Marconi wireless equipment allowed to communicate with stations more than a thousand miles away. Her navigating equipment was huge and would help steer the ship safely in the right direction with four main compasses. A variety of other nautical equipment calculated the position of the ship, distance travelled, speed and depth of water.

Titanic had a huge array of rooms and facilities. First-, Second- and Third-class public areas were separate and were decorated very differently. First-class areas were very luxurious and comparable with the best hotels of the time. Second-class facilities were probably equivalent to First-class facilities on other ships and indeed while Third-class public areas were basic, they were also superior to those on most other ships at the time and included a dining saloon, smoke room, general room and promenade.

On 2 April 2012 1912 Titanic left Belfast for the last time after completing her sea trials. She headed to Southampton to prepare for her maiden voyage. The paperwork was complete. On 25 March 1912, the Board of Trade certified Titanic’s port of registry as Liverpool and her displacement, a mighty 52,310 tons. After successful sea trials to test her engines and equipment, Harland and Wolff formally handed Titanic over to White Star. The Board of Trade surveyor signed her certificate of seaworthiness. Under the captaincy of Captain Smith, she called in to Southampton, Cherbourg and Queenstown in Ireland and on 11 April headed into the Atlantic and the next port of call was New York. Typically, First-class passengers included the rich and famous who were there for a joyride while Third-class passengers included many of the 2 million emigrants who left Ireland for North America between 1851 and 1921.

On the night of 14^th of April disaster struck as she hit an iceberg on the right side at high speed. Five of her 16 compartments were flooded, but the ship was not designed to stay afloat with more than four damaged compartments. In barely 3 hours, Titanic disappeared into the ocean causing the death of 1517 people. She was carrying lifeboats for only 1178 people and indeed many of these small boats were not even full when they left. Titanic broke in two as she sank with hundreds of people still on board.

Carpathia was the first ship to reach the scene of the disaster. She picked up 713 passengers and crew from the lifeboats and made for New York. Captain Arthur Rostron, commander of Cunard’s liner Carpathia, was heading from New York to the Mediterranean. He had turned in for the night when his wireless operator burst into his cabin with the news of Titanic’s distress signals. He ordered Carpathia to turn around under full steam. Over the next few hours, Carpathia had found 20 lifeboats and rescued 713 passengers and crew, and Rostron decided to go back to New York.

Apart from those on board Carpathia, there were no other survivors of the disaster following the loss of Titanic. In order to discover the cause of the tragedy, a couple of inquiries were initiated just a few days later. The British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry was longer and more formal than the American investigation. It relied more on experts than the memories of survivors. Lawyer and former MP Charles Bigham, Lord Mersey chaired the British Inquiry that opened on 2 May. He had maritime experts to guide him. The Inquiry sought answers to 26 specific questions covering construction, operation, the sinking and the rescue.

Experienced seamen supported Captain Smith’s decisions, but Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton was the one voice of dissent. From his experience of sailing through ice, Titanic was going too fast.

The British Inquiry made 24 recommendations to avoid such a disaster happening again. The Inquiry presented its report to both Houses of Parliament on 30 July. (One has to contrast that with the sluggish way in which investigations into disasters like the Grenfell Tower fire have been conducted in recent times.) The Inquiry concluded the loss of Titanic, was due to collision with an iceberg, brought about by the excessive speed at which the ship was being navigated. Its recommendations included:

Only two days after the disaster, in the United States Republican Senator Alden Smith demanded an inquiry. He persuaded President Taft to send a vessel to accompany Carpathia into New York in case J Bruce Ismay tried to escape. The US Senate Inquiry began the day after Carpathia docked. Passengers and crew were questioned in an attempt to find out exactly what happened and why. The Inquiry lasted 18 days questioning 86 witnesses. On 28 May Senator Smith delivered his findings in a two-hour address to Congress. He concluded that:

Following the Inquiries, new laws were passed to improve safety at sea. These included:

As a result of these changes, except in wartime, no life has been lost at sea as a result of an accident involving icebergs.

A great deal of mythology has built up around the Titanic disaster, probably not helped by some of the films that have been made. Some of these are reasonably accurate while others introduce fictional stories that come from the imagination of the writers. However, one story does strike me as quite remarkable. Morgan Robertson was an American novelist who, in 1898, wrote a short story, Futility, in which a very large unsinkable ship called Titan (nearly as big as Titanic) hit an iceberg on its side and sinks in the Atlantic at high speed, one April night. Only a few passengers and crew survived because there are not enough lifeboats. This story was published 14 years before Titanic sank!