NO ONE WHO WAS there that day ever forgot what they saw. Tens of thousands of people lined the shores of Belfast Lough in brilliant sunshine to watch RMS Titanicbeing launched on May 31st, 1911. It was to be another 10 months before it set sail, but that day the city was en fête and in a state of excitement.
Tickets were sold for a reserved enclosure at the Albert Quay with the proceeds going to local hospitals. Sightseers swarmed every vantage point from the roofs of coal sheds to the masts of harbour shipping. The dignitaries included JP Morgan, owner of the White Star Line, and the company’s chairman Bruce Ismay.
During the morning, workmen added the final touches and several minutes after noon, a red flag was hoisted to warn the fleet of boats in the River Lagan to Stand Away! The vessel was being held on slipway No 3 by hydraulic triggers which required the opening of a valve for release to then allow the huge bulk to glide into the water. Two rockets were fired, followed by a third at 12.10, and the 26,000 ton hull started down the slipway.
Gangs of workers scrambled clear, and with little ceremony and not even a modest bottle of champagne to break over the bow, the chairman of Harland and Wolff, Lord Pirrie, launched the ship to shouts of "There she goes". Titanicreached a speed of 12 knots before six anchor chains and two piles of cable drag chains weighing almost 80 tons brought her to a halt. The entire process took just 62 seconds.
Within an hour the ship, which was launched as an empty shell, was moved by tugs to a deep-water wharf where tests began to make her seaworthy. The engines and propelling machinery were installed while carpenters, electricians and 67 other trades fitted out the passenger accommodation. Their job was to bring the interior to life, installing thousands of items and imbuing it with a unique character. Sea trials were later held and ten months after the launch, on April 2nd, 1912, the Titanicleft for Southampton. Many local reporters covered the event and 85 members of the press from England and Scotland were ferried across the Irish Sea from Fleetwood in Lancashire on a specially chartered steamer Duke of Argyll.
Apart from the journalistic descriptions, some colourful accounts of the launch survive. William MacQuitty – later a merchant banker, film producer and founder of Ulster Television – watched it as a boy of six and wrote about it in his autobiography A Life to Remember: "All at once the workers on board gave a cheer in which the crowds on shore joined. Every ship in the lough sounded its siren, the noise drowning the roar of the piles of restraining anchors as they were dragged along the ground. Slowly gathering speed, the Titanicmoved smoothly down the ways, and a minute later was plunging into the water raising a huge wave."
From the top of the Albert Clock, the writer, actor and dramatist, Richard Hayward also witnessed the event. Nearly 50 years later he appeared in the Titanicfilm A Night to Remember which was directed by MacQuitty. Writing in Ulster Illustrated in 1958, Hayward summed up the significance of the moment: "Epoch-making indeed, and epoch-annihilating too, for that was the era of Edwardian complacency and leisurely comfort, the era of sharp social distinctions and smug self-sufficiency, the era in which man was deluded into the notion that nature was at last his slave; an era which died with the Titanicitself."
On April 10th, 1912 the ship, weighing 46,328 tons, set sail for New York, calling at Cherbourg and Queenstown, now Cobh, before steaming across the Atlantic by the northerly route. At 11.40pm on April 14th she struck a huge iceberg and sank at 2.20am on April 15th. Of the 2,201 passengers and crew, only 705 survived because there were not enough lifeboats provided for the “ship of dreams”. Around the world that day the liner passed from history into legend but the drama of the story has never gone away.
To coincide with the anniversary of the launch, a series of events has been organised. At the end of May a photographic and artifact display TITANICa: The Exhibitionopens at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Co Down and will run until the end of next year. More than 500 original artifacts including letters and postcards are on show and there is even a first-class chamber pot with the White Star logo. A trail links the transport galleries to the newly-opened People's Story in the outdoor museum where visitors can explore the living history experience through daily routines in the period before, during and after the maiden voyage.
Today, in the shadow of the shipyard's giant yellow cranes, squads of hard-hatted builders are working at a hectic pace on the TitanicBelfast visitor attraction, due for completion early in 2012. Masterminded by an Offaly man, Noel Molloy, it will tell the liner's story as well as the wider theme of the city's industrial heritage. Clad in diamond glazing, the bow-shaped façade of the six-storey building reflects the lines of the ship. Its shard-like appearance is created from 3,000 different shaped panels each folded from silver anodized aluminium sheets into asymmetrical geometries which catch the light like a cut diamond.
One hundred years on from its launch, the Titanicremains an enduring source of fascination. News stories keep the legacy of the world's most renowned maritime disaster in the public eye: a survivor dies, the wreck is explored, memorabilia tours the world, or new photographs come to light; in 1997 interest was rekindled by James Cameron's film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
Belfast is planning a prodigious line-up of events for 2012 which the city fathers have labelled a “Year of Opportunity”, in anticipation of the arrival of a new breed of tourists, affectionately known as “Titanoracks”.