Belfast and the Titanic Quarter

Last Friday, we took the two-hour train ride from Dublin's Connolly Station for a day trip to Belfast in Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom.  We really wanted to see Belfast, both for the Titanic Museum and to see what Belfast is like compared to Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland, since the Troubles (mostly) ended.  Plus it was an excuse to take a train ride.  It was a lovely trip, through much farmland and an occasional small town.  The train was new and modern (WiFi!), the tracks smooth, and the service on time.

We took our passports, thinking there would be some kind of entry process, but we just walked off the train and into Belfast.  Suddenly we were back in the UK, though we did see the occasional sign in Gaelic.  We procured some pounds (having been using euros in Ireland) and bought the hop-on, hop-off Belfast Tour bus to both take a tour of the city and get to Titanic Belfast.  Memorably, the Belfast Tour salesman almost got hit by a bus running ahead to make sure his bus waited for us. 

First stop for us, Titanic Belfast.

The Titanic was built in Belfast, at the enormous Harland & Wolff shipyard.  In the pic above, the brick building to the right of the Titanic Belfast building is the original drafting offices of Harland & Wolff.  Each corner of the silvery Titanic Exhibit is as high as the Titanic's hull. At the time that the Titanic was built, 1909-1911, H&W employed about 15,000 people and built 126 ships, including a sister ship to the Titanic, the Olympic, built alongside the Titanic. (There was also a third Olympic Class ship built.)  The dockyards and shipbuilding allowed Belfast to be a boom town and the industrial center of Ireland at that time.  Over time, H&W employed 30,000 people in Belfast and is still in existance today.

You proceed chronologically through the museum/exhibition, which puts the construction of the Titanic in context with the era and with Belfast.  The first part really puts the amount of sheer hard labor it took to build the Titanic in perspective.  A ride takes you through part of the Titanic under construction with riveters working around you.  Because the original gantry was 220 feet high, the ride moves through several levels.  An estimated 3 million rivets were used in the construction of the hull.  I read that a four-man team could complete 200 rivets a day.  It was all by hand.  One image that stays with me is that the riveters wore scarves to protect their necks from the sparks.  3000 men worked on the Titanic; 8 died during construction.

The next part of the exhibit talks about the fittings on the ship to accommodate the passengers, and the passengers themselves.  Much has been said about the first class passengers, such as Margaret "Unsinkable Molly" Brown and John Astor IV, but about a thousand of the 1300 passengers were second and third class passengers. A few passengers have their stories told on the walls as you move through.

A typical third class room is shown below; second class also had bunks, but a larger, nicer room.  The first class rooms were pretty much like the best hotel room you've been in.  The decor and fittings of the first class decks were simply amazing.  There's a cool 180 degree video that takes you from the keel of the ship up through all the levels all the way to the bridge.

Eventually, of course, you come to the iceberg.  You enter a room whose walls are covered with the messages that passed between the Titanic and other ships as it hit the iceberg and began to sink.  A graphic of a sinking ship plays over and over again on the wall and readings of passenger accounts play as you make your way through the room.  Stark and moving.

We finished with the room that accounts for the survivors and then tells of the investigations in both the US and Britain.  There are amazing photos of the ship that brought in the survivors. The Titanic's sister-ships, the Olympic and the Britannic, were retro-fitted after the disaster to strenghten the hulls.   The Britannic was sunk by a German mine during WWI.  The Olympic lived out its lifespan and was decommissioned in the 30s.

We thought it was well worth seeing.  There also is a two story theatre where you can watch as the Titanic's wreckage is explored, a snack bar and a restaurant, and of course, a gift shop.  Outside metal uprights mark the location of the slips where the Titanic and the Olympic were built.  There's also an additional boat cruise that you can take.

Titanic By The Numbers

3 years and $4.7 million to build

883 feet long

825 tons of coal burned a day

First class ticket: 2,966 pounds sterling

Number of ice warnings received: 6

Time to sink: 2 hours 40 minutes

Number of lifeboats: 20

32% of passengers and crew got seats, not all lifeboats were filled

Time for Carpathia to arrive: 1 hour 50 minutes

Number of passengers and crew saved by Carpathia: 705

Number of dogs who survived: 2 (out of nine)

68% of Titanic's passengers and crew died.

92% of those who died were male.

9% of those who died were first class passengers, 28% of survivors were.

11% of those who who died were second class passengers, 17% of survivors were.

35% of those who died were third class passengers, 25% of survivors were.

45% of those who died were crew, 30% of survivors were.

---from titanicbynumbers.com

Back on the bus for a tour of Belfast...