A trip to the Republic of Ireland should include a visit to Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom. Not only is there an additional beautiful coastline to see, but the architecture and people are also different. Another influencer of the decision to visit is the history of the sectarian “troubles” between Catholics and Protestants. And it isn’t all history, even today, while at peace, each side takes every opportunity to poke the other in the eye. It makes Belfast seem weary. It’s something one feels. And finally, there is the Titanic museum, which is in its own way titanic.
Our trip started with a two-hour train trip to Belfast. While not a TVG or bullet train, the trip puts the U.S. to shame. We went 2nd class up to Belfast. The train is whistle clean. Very comfy seats can be reserved and are denoted by a small red light above the seat. At station stops, the boarding passengers look for the green lights and take those seats. We returned first class and first class it is—tablecloths, personal service, food, and beverages.
We departed the train in Belfast and hopped on a sightseeing standard throughout Europe. It is a hop-on, hop-off double-decker bus. It tours the city, and you can hop off at any attraction and hop back on when ready to continue. There’s a bus about every 20 minutes. It’s a great way either to start a visit, get in the sights, and then decide where to go and what to do based on what you’ve seen and heard on the bus. One of the sights is the museum dedicated to the Titanic, which was built in Belfast to sail the ocean blue. As you undoubtedly know, it didn’t.
The story of the Titanic is a complex one, one that the world had forgotten mainly until the movie produced by James Cameron and Jon Landau, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, brought it back into focus. The multi-story museum immerses you in history, from conception to disaster. In its day, Belfast was the premier ocean-going shipbuilding capital of the world. Its craftsmen also turned out many other-sized ships. Competition between the two largest ocean-going companies in the world—Harland and Wolff’s White Star Line and Cunard—created the birth of the ship. Not only is the story of that competition told, but one can examine the engineering drawings of this titan of a ship. It would be the biggest and fastest in the world. One of the most unique aspects of the tour is the cinematic creation of the characters. You eavesdrop on the conversations, you look over the shoulders of the engineers and draftsmen. You see the ship’s growth from creation to launch.
Titanic was the correct name. Built to be the biggest and fastest ship afloat, she was 882.5 feet long and 92.5 feet across. She could carry 46,328 tons and had a displacement of 52,000 tons. Two thousand sheets of one-inch steel were bolted into place by 3 million rivets. The Titanic was as tall as an 11-story building. Just getting her onto and then off the slides that would send her into the water took skill, luck, and prayers. Remember, this was the first decade of the 20th century.
There is a part of the tour where you become part of the building, listening to conversations of the men putting together this extraordinarily complex jigsaw puzzle, and you witness the launch, itself an engineering marvel. You also board the ship. There are complete place settings of the silverware, plates, and glasses to see. For those who travelled first class, you were sailing on the finest hotel in the world. The first-class dining salon on the Titanic could accommodate 554 passengers at a time. It featured 115 tables with seating ranging from 2 to 12 people. There were 3,000 teacups, 40,000 eggs, 36,000 oranges, and 3,364 bags of mail to give you an idea of what passengers had available to them. Billionaire (in today’s dollars), JJ Astor was the ship’s richest passenger. So, what happened?
First, there was overconfidence. After all, the ship was supposed to be unsinkable. She was in ice-berg-laden waters but going too fast. There were multiple warnings about bergs. They were ignored.
Due to lax requirements, the ship had only half the number of lifeboats needed for passengers and crew. There were 2,224 souls aboard, 1,317 passengers and 907 crew. Fifteen hundred died. The worst of it was that they shouldn’t have. Blunder after blunder sank the ship.
There were also structural flaws. In those days, steel had a high sulfur count. The Titanic’s was higher than usual for those days. A diver’s find at the wreck site of a piece of steel from the hull showed what happened. The sulfur caused cracks, and the cracks had the peculiar effect of lengthening, creating long lines of potential weakness from the site of the imperfection. And there was a worse flaw. The watertight compartments weren’t watertight. They didn’t seal when full, so the water flowed from one to the next, causing the ship to tip forward and go down head first (excuse me, bow first). Had the compartments functioned correctly, the water would have pooled horizontally. Estimates are that the ship would have stayed afloat for several more hours, enough time for nearby ships to reach her and rescue many of the people in the water. The water temperature passengers fell into was below freezing, 28 degrees.
The RMS Titanic traveled approximately 1,809 miles (2,911 kilometers) from Queenstown, Ireland (now Cobh, Ireland) to the point where it struck the iceberg, according to Quora. This was roughly 3 days and 11 hours into its maiden voyage. The ship was about 400 miles south of Newfoundland when it sank. She went from celebration to sinking.
Both Irelands are a treasure trove of interactive museums. It is hard to pick a winner—the 8th-century Book of Kells, or the tenement building that recreates the lives of families numbering a dozen or more packed into one room. Families were large. 90% of all children died before the age of five, unless the family was wealthy. Arthur Guinness, the founder of Guinness Beer, born in 1759, had over two dozen children, all with one wife! More will be said about him next month. But even with all the experiences available, the Titanic Museum is a winner, well worth the time and money to experience.
Columnist and author Bill Gralnick was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He recently finished a humorous memoir trilogy. The first book is “The War of the Itchy Balls and Other Tales from Brooklyn.” The second is “George Washington Didn’t Sleep Here.” The recently published third is, That’s Why They Call It Work.” He is currently working on a novel. His books are available on Amazon and his other writings at https://www.williamgralnickauthor.com.
