April 15, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. National Geographic Channel takes a look back at Belfast, the city where the Titanic was built, with Felix Maginn. How did the ship's construction affect the city, and what happened after it sank?
On April 15, 1912, the passenger ship RMS Titanic sank. The wreck of this "unsinkable" ship, best known from the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, was found in 1985 by National Geographic Explorer Bob Ballard.
In 2012, a century after the disaster, the Titanic is more alive than ever. In “The Birthplace of the Titanic”, a Dutch National Geographic documentary, host Eddy Zoëy goes with MOKE singer Felix Maginn to Belfast, Ireland, to learn more about the Titanic. Belfast is not only the birthplace of Felix Maginn, but also of the Titanic.
Dry dock
In 1908, Irish shipbuilders received Harland &Wolff the order of the shipping company White Star Line to build 3 huge ships including the Titanic and the Olympic. This required significant adjustments to be made in the port. For example, Harland &Wolff built the world's largest dry harbor, in which the ships were placed to place the propellers and paint the hull.
This dry dock could hold up to 95 million liters of water. When the dry dock was sufficient and the ship sailed in, all the water was pumped out again by three steam pumps. These three pumps were able to get all the water out in just an hour and a half! When the water was gone, the ship rested on a large number of wooden blocks. Because the dry harbor was just the right size for the ship, it is now known as the "physical footprint of the Titanic." Building the dry dock took seven years. 500 men were digging 7 days a week. In total, the port cost about half a million pounds. Today that would be over 23 million pounds.
Before the ship could enter the dry dock, the individual parts had to be completely assembled. A separate building was also created for this:the Arrol Gantry. Both the Olympic and the Titanic were built here. Finally, the canal also had to be made 8 meters deeper from the shipyards, so that the ships could sail out. The Titanic created a lot of jobs:as many as 30,000 people were hired to build the Titanic. The city experienced enormous industrial growth and became one of the most important shipbuilding centers in the world.
Protestants and Catholics
Almost all the workers who worked in the harbor were Protestant. There was severe segregation in Belfast. The Catholics and Protestants lived strictly separated from each other, and great quarrels took place among themselves. This segregation was beginning of the 20 e century already present, but can still be felt today. Huge 'Peace Walls' lopen run across Belfast that separate Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods. These walls are even larger in size than the Berlin Wall. And despite the fact that the Catholics and Protestants now largely live together in peace, the walls are still there. They give a sense of security.
Felix Maginn was raised Catholic, and therefore knew little about the Titanic. “I knew the name of the ship and that it was built in Belfast, but nothing else was said about it during my childhood. For more information, I had to watch a film from 1958,” Felix says. “For a long time I saw Kenneth Moore as captain of the Titanic.”
The fact that only Protestants worked in the harbor was not only due to segregation. “Of course it was partly segregation. But it was also a matter of favoritism. Protestants often helped each other find a job in the harbor because they knew each other, and then you are less likely to join as a Catholic. Catholics often missed the connections in this.”
This is precisely why many Catholics knew very little about the Titanic. “My journey through Belfast was one big voyage of discovery. I look back on my city with great pride. The Titanic was the world's largest moving object made by mankind at its time, and it's great that it was built by people from Belfast."
Huge
The Titanic was indeed huge. 3 million rivets were used for the hull alone. The ship was 268 meters long and 28 meters wide. Each engine in the ship was the size of a three-storey building. Measured from the keel, the Titanic was the height of a ten-storey apartment building. Such a colossus naturally stood out in the city. When the Titanic set sail, more than 1,000 people bought tickets to see the departure from the harbor. The proceeds of these tickets went to hospitals in Belfast.
Nobody expected that this great pride of the city, this 'unsinkable' ship, would experience such a disaster. It was almost taboo to talk about it at the shipyard. “Back then, people didn't have the technologies that we have now,” says Felix. “It was therefore not clear where the error lay. The word 'Titanic' just wasn't mentioned." Rumors of course circulated, for example that the ship had been deliberately sabotaged by an anti-Catholic dock worker. But there was also talk of a mummy curse. Some people even said that the Titanic hadn't sunk at all, but had switched identities with another ship.
The true story
In the meantime, of course, we know better. Due to an optical illusion, the Titanic's crew saw the iceberg arriving much too late. The optical illusion was created by a mirage. By the time the officers saw the iceberg approaching, they had only 37 seconds to turn the ship away.
According to witnesses, the managers on the ship remained very calm. Captain Edward J. Smith tried to help as many people as possible into the lifeboats. Harold S. Bride, a survivor of the disaster, said he saw Smith diving off the ship in the final moments.
The ship's designer, Thomas Andrews, had to tell the captain that the ship was going to sink. Andrews also helped the passengers safely and calmly into the lifeboats. He was last seen in a prime smoking area looking at a painting. He was not wearing a life jacket, and went down with the ship.
Nowadays
It is only recently that Belfast is trying to put itself on the map with the Titanic. In 1998, Catholics and Protestants officially made peace with each other. It was also realized that the sinking of the Titanic was not the fault of the Irish. It has almost become a saying in Belfast:“There's nothing wrong with our ships!” An Irish guide explains this sneeringly:“The Titanic was in excellent condition when she left the Irish port. The Titanic's captain was British, the navigator was Scottish and the iceberg was Canadian. The Irish are not to blame!”
Today, the Titanic is a real attraction. In April, the Titanic Museum opened, near the Harland &Wolff shipyard. This enormous building cost about 100 million pounds. In the museum, visitors imagine themselves in the Titanic through an extremely detailed reconstruction.
Because National Geographic Explorer Bob Ballard discovered the wreckage, National Geographic Channel on the weekend of April 7, it's all about the Titanic, which includes documentaries with Bob Ballard and James Cameron. The weekend kicks off on Saturday at 9 pm with “The Birthplace of the Titanic”, a Dutch documentary starring Felix Maginn and Eddy Zoëy in Belfast.
- National Geographic Channel – Titanic 100
- Titanic virtual up
- Iceberg in sight!