Titanic 100 Years Later

[Ciaran]

I have little direct interest in The Titanic, although it was built in the Harland & Wolff shipyard in my beloved home city of Belfast. At the time, Belfast was world's leading manufacturer of ships.

The completion of The Titanic was a thing of pride for Belfast and its sinking damaged the psyche of the city for many years. It was something that was rarely discussed. Following decades of sectarian conflict and the decline of our manufacturing base, the shipyards died. The offices where The Titanic was designed remained but were boarded up. Bus tours of Belfast took visitors to the site where The Titanic was built - it was nothing but desolate wasteland and ghosts.

Until recently, our commemoration of the Titanic had been more discrete through a beautiful memorial to the Titanic victims erected in the grounds of our City Hall in 1920.

Things are very different today - a multi-million dollar Titanic Visitor Centre (http://www.titanicbelfast.com/Home.aspx) opens this month and the city is at the heart of the Titanic celebrations. The Centre is in our Titanic quarter, the rebirth of the wasteland into waterfront apartments, offices and shops in what may become a thriving part of our city.

Not all rests easy with me. There's blatant over-commercialisation from the sale of Titanic-branded potato chips to a range of garish Titanic souvenirs. However, overall, this is incredibly positive and it's beautiful to see my city's contribution to The Titanic being finally recognised and the exorcising of certain ghosts in the process. As we've said in Belfast for many decades, The Titanic was fine when it left here.


As an aside, my grandfather was born only miles away from The Titanic on the same day that it set sale from Belfast. Sadly, I never knew him as he died more than a decade before I was born.