The Titanic sinking may have been a disaster, but the ship certainly was not. Nor was the steel used in the Harland and Wolff shipyard of poor quality, the Glandore Classic Boats Summer School heard in Co Cork this week.
In a sterling defence of the Belfast-built vessel, Mr Stephen Cameron, of the Ulster Titanic Society, told the school's opening session that a leading Harland and Wolff naval architect has disputed the "brittle steel" theory which has been in recent circulation.
The naval architect had dived on the site, some 2 1/2 miles below the north Atlantic surface off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and had noted that the bow's port side hull was curved in for about a metre radius. This was a result of impact with the seabed, Mr Cameron said. If the steel had been brittle, the plates would have cracked, rather than bent.
Mr Cameron, who delivered the keynote Saoirse lecture at the biennial school, said the ship was not considered to be important when it was built in 1912. It was the second of three sister vessels comprising the Olympic Class liners, and was the largest vessel afloat at the time.
Paying tribute to Dr Robert Ballagh, of the US Woods Hole Institute, who discovered the shipwreck in 1985 and took only photographic images, Mr Cameron was critical of the later expeditions undertaken by the current salvor in possession. Over 3,000 objects, including the bell from the crow's nest, had been removed, and the main mast was broken as the bell was pulled from its fittings.
The Ulster Titanic Society opposed plans to salvage the structure, as this was a bit like "digging up your grandfather to get his wedding ring", he said.
If Ireland had had coal, the fishing industry could have rivalled that of Britain in the last century, Mr Arthur Reynolds, founding editor of the Irish Skipper magazine, told the school.
In an address on the history of Irish fishing from 1850 to 1940, he said that the discovery of coal here would have resulted in cheap ice, the ability to build steel ships and to run steam-powered vessels to distant grounds.
Britain's fisheries became dependent on ice in the 19th century, while the fisheries for mackerel and herring, cod and ling around these coasts would not have been possible without salt for curing.
Referring to current developments, he said problems of over-fishing related to political, rather than scientific, management of north Atlantic stocks. The very real danger now was marine pollution, he said. The oceans were being used recklessly as dumping places for noxious chemicals and other man-made wastes.
