One hundred years after the sinking of the Titanic

during its maiden voyage to New York, the story ofthe UK’s most famous liner is being retold like never

before, writes Richard Johnstone-Bryden

As the centenary of the RMS

Titanic’s tragic demise

approaches, the city of

Belfast will embrace its

heritage as the birthplace of

the world’s most famous ship when the

£97million visitor attraction Titanic

Belfast opens its doors to the public.

Standing a mere 100 yards away from the

slipway where Titanic was built, the

museum’s eye-catching building has

been inspired by the rich history of the

legendary liner and the Harland &

Wolff shipyard. Its profile represents

four 90ft-high hulls, while its

façade has been influenced by ice

crystals and waves. Inside, visitors

will be able to explore nine

galleries devoted to Titanic’s

captivating story.

As the second member of White Star’s

Olympic class, Titanic’s origins date back to

the debut of Cunard’s Lusitania and

Mauretania in 1907.Their size, luxury and

speed gave Cunard a significant advantage

in the highly competitive transatlantic

passenger market. To counter the threat

posed by this duo,White Star’s chairman,

Bruce Ismay, ordered three new liners

from the Belfast shipyard of

Harland & Wolff. They would

have a similar speed but exceed

their rivals by an additional

length of nearly 100ft and be

fitted out to more lavish standards

throughout. Harland & Wolff’s

managing director, Thomas

Andrews, took charge of the design

work for these leviathans which,

on completion, became the

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Facing page, left: workmen aredwarfed by Titanic’s propellers.Bottom left: a bell recoveredfrom the ill-fated liner’s wreck.

Here: illustration used topromote the 1953 film Titanic,one of many inspired by thetragic events a century ago

world’s largest ships. Two new slipways,

topped by the towering Arrol Gantry, had

to be built before the keels ofOlympic and

Titanic could be laid on 16 December

1908 and 31 March 1909 respectively.

Four thousand tradesmen participated

in the construction of each ship. Titanic’s

launch on 31 May 1911 attracted

100,000 spectators and also marked the

official completion of Olympic.

Afterwards, Titanic’s hull was brought

alongside the fitting-out berth for the

installation of her machinery and lavish

interiors, while Olympic embarked on her

maiden voyage. The disruption caused by

Olympic’s return for repairs on two

separate occasions turned Titanic’s final

months in Belfast into a race against time.

Despite these problems,White Star

pressed on with the preparations for

Titanic’s maiden voyage by announcing

the appointment of Edward Smith as her

first captain.

Titanic passed her sea trials with flying

colours on 2 April 1912 before leaving

Belfast that evening for Southampton. To

regain lost time, the publicity visit to

Liverpool was cancelled. As the location

of White Star’s head office and the liner’s

registered home port, Liverpool boasts a

rich Titanic heritage including links to the

lookout Fred Fleet, who spotted the fatal

iceberg, which will form the basis of a

new exhibition at the Merseyside

Maritime Museum.

The majority of Titanic’s crew were

recruited during her week-long visit to

Southampton, which proved to be a

hectic period as workmen completed the

remaining unfinished areas. As the visit

drew to a close, the activity increased

with the embarkation of stores, cargo and

passengers. Southampton’s own

connections to Titanic will be portrayed

within the new Sea City Museum, due to

open on 10 April to coincide with the

centenary of the liner’s departure from

Southampton’s docks. The museum’s

displays include re-creating the

experience of joining Titanic from the

quayside, an audio visual show based on

the British inquiry and the disaster room

which describes the liner’s final hours.

Titanic’s departure nearly ended in

disaster as she passed the moored liner

New York. The powerful surge created by

Titanic’s hull snapped New York’s

mooring lines and swung her hull

perilously close to Titanic’s stern. Quick

thinking by Captain Smith, the local pilot

and the captain of the tug Vulcan averted

a serious accident.

That evening, the passengers enjoyed a

beautiful sunset as she dropped anchor in

Cherbourg harbour. A lack of suitable

facilities meant that all of the passengers

who used the French port had to be

conveyed to Titanic byWhite Star’s

tenders Nomadic and Traffic which had

been built at Harland &Wolff. Once

capable of transporting 1,000 first- and

second-class passengers, the 220ftNomadic

is now the sole survivingWhite Star

vessel. She was brought back to Belfast in

2006 for restoration in the Hamilton

Graving Dock near Titanic Belfast.

Within two hours of arriving in

Cherbourg Harbour, Titanic sailed for

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The fate of theWhite Star Line’sother mighty passenger vessels

Nicknamed ‘The Old Reliable’, the lead shipof White Star’s Olympic class proved to bethe longest serving of the trio. Olympic’s(see above right; Titanic on left) chequered24-year career included colliding with thecruiser HMS Hawke in 1911, rescuing thecrew of the battleship HMS Audacious,serving as a troopship in the First WorldWar, sinking the German submarine U103,and colliding with the floating lighthouseNantucket in 1934. A review of thecombined fleet created by the merger ofWhite Star and Cunard in 1934 led to thewithdrawal of Olympic in 1935, by whichtime it had steamed over 1,500,000 milesand completed 257 round trips to America.

She was sold for scrap in September 1935and her interior fittings were sold byauction. Many of her elaborate woodenpanels were sold for re-use in hotels andprivate homes, including the White SwanHotel in Alnwick, Northumberland, whereher dining room can still be seen.

Britannic, the last of the trio, nevercarried a fare-paying customer due to theoutbreak of the First World War before hercompletion. She was requisitioned by thegovernment and commissioned as HisMajesty’s Hospital Ship Britannic in 1915 tobring the wounded back to the UK from theGallipoli campaign. A German minebrought her brief career to a halt on 21November 1916 off the Greek island of Keawith the loss of 28 lives. Her wreck wasdiscovered lying on its starboard side by theFrench explorer Jacques Cousteau at adepth of approximately 400ft in 1976.

TITANIC’S SISTER SHIPS

Queenstown, since renamed Cobh.

Among those leaving at the liner’s final

port of call on 11 April was the trainee

Jesuit priest Father Francis Browne,

whose photographs provide a unique

insight into life onboard. Following the

disaster, Browne’s photographs appeared

in newspapers across the world and

subsequently inspired some of the scenes

in James Cameron’s 1997 film.

From Ireland, Titanic set sail for the

North Atlantic’s southern sea lane.

Normally, it would have been free of ice

but that winter was the mildest for 30

years, which led to an unusually high

number of icebergs along the route.

Titanic’s date with destiny occurred on

the fifth night of her voyage. Although

several warnings had been received of

icebergs ahead, a speed of 21 knots was

maintained, even though the clear, calm,

moonless conditions significantly increased

the risk of not being able to see an iceberg.

The lookout Fred Fleet saw the fatal

iceberg at 11.40pm on 14 April and

immediately alerted the bridge. The

subsequent attempts to avoid it failed to

prevent a lethal glancing blow along the

starboard bow. Titanic had been designed

to remain afloat in the event of her first

four watertight compartments being

flooded, yet the collision breached the

first five, thereby sealing her fate. Her

designer, Thomas Andrews, inspected the

damage and predicted that she might stay

afloat for between 1½ and 2 hours.

Captain Smith responded by issuing

orders to uncover the lifeboats and for

the wireless operators to issue the

standard CQD distress signal – that night

Titanic became the first ship in distress to

issue a SOS signal. At a distance of 58

miles, the Cunard liner Carpathia was the

closest ship to respond, but she could not

reach the stricken liner in time, so

Captain Smith gave orders to load the

Attempts to avoid the fatal iceberg failedto prevent a lethal glancing blow along

Titanic’s starboard bow

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Clockwise from facing page, top: passengers take astroll on deck while docked in County Cork; tugsgive Titanic a helping hand; eye witness sketches ofthe ship’s final moments; the radio station fromwhere the doomed vessel issued an SOS signal;original poster advertising Titanic’s maiden voyage

TITANIC’S 100th ANNIVERSARY

lifeboats, starting the process with thewomen and children.Despite complying with the Board of

Trade’s regulations, Titanic’s 16 woodenand four collapsible lifeboats could onlycarry 1,178 of the 2,208 people onboard.The situation was compounded by thereluctance of some passengers to board thefirst lifeboats, thereby resulting in thedispatch of lifeboats with unused capacity.Many believed that help would arrive intime not least because the lights of anothership could initially be seen on the horizon.The identity of this ship has remained thesubject of intense debate with CaptainLord’s freighter Californian identified asthe principal suspect, even thoughevidence suggests that up to five othervessels may have been closer.The salvation offered by the approaching

Carpathia was nearly two hours awaywhen Titanic met her end at 2.20am (localtime) on 15 April 1912. 1,503 people losttheir lives in the icy waters that night,while 705 survivors endured the cold onthe lifeboats until Carpathia’s arrival.News of the tragedy took hours to

emerge. Remarkably, some initial pressreports stated that everyone had beensaved and Titanic was being towed toHalifax, Nova Scotia. Such optimismquickly evaporated as those left behindwere forced to deal with the loss of theirloved ones. The death toll confirmed thatneither wealth nor seniority guaranteedsurvival with Captain Smith, ThomasAndrews and the American multi-millionaire Colonel John Jacob Astoramong the dead.Afterwards, four vesselsretrieved 328 victims from the Atlantic, ofwhich 150 were buried in Halifax.Official inquires weresubsequently held on both sidesof the Atlantic and the on-going ‘Titanic Industry’established itself within daysof the disaster.The prospect of locating

and raising the wreckcaptivated the public’simagination for decades and eveninspired the film Raise The Titanic

based on Clive Cussler’s novel. However,hopes of finding Titanic intact were dashedon 1 September 1985 when Dr RobertBallard’s joint American and French teamdiscovered her upright wreck in two piecesat a depth of 2½ miles. Stripped of all herwoodwork by wood-borers and covered inrusticles formed by iron-eating bacteria,

Titanic’s devastated wreck is a shadow ofher former glory. The 1,970ft gap betweenthe two sections contains a debris fieldstrewn with thousands of items, rangingfrom personal possessions to large pieces ofthe ship. The most poignant discoverieswere pairs of shoes lying side by side whichserve as a lasting reminder that the wreckis a grave site and should be treated withrespect. Not all subsequent expeditionshave heeded Ballard’s calls to treat the sitewith dignity and only take photographs. Ofthese, RMS Titanic Inc, the official salvager,has attracted the most criticism byrecovering more than 5,000 artefacts fromthe wreck to form a unique collection,offered for sale as one lot by the New York-based auctioneers Guernseys on 11 April.

The rules governing the future publicaccess to this collection and the

opening of the new museums willensure that the RMS Titanic

remains the world’s mostfamous ship for theforeseeable future.

Clockwise from right: Explore Southampton’sconnections to Titanic at the new Sea City

Museum; the ship’s last resting place; a pocketwatch salvaged from the wreck; a partially full

lifeboat flees the stricken vessel; news eventuallybreaks of the scale of the disaster

106 Discover Britain

TITANIC’S 100th ANNIVERSARY

1,503 poeple lost their lives in the icywaters that night, while 705 survivorsendured the cold on the lifeboats

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