It’s Titanorak-heaven at the moment in the TQ! I’m having the time of my life…
Next Tuesday is a big big day in Titanic history – the 100-year anniversary of the day Titanic was launched as an empty metal shell from the slipways behind the drawing office. Imagine the sight – 800-plus-feet, thousands of tons, of riveted metal sliding down the angled slipway under the massive Arrol gantries, picking up speed as she slid into the waiting waters of Belfast Lough. Sixty-two seconds from start to finish.
Preparations are well underway to mark the occasion with music, prayer, readings and a 62-second cheer at precisely 13 minutes past 12 – the exact anniversary. The Dock team are right in the middle of it all – so you’ll get all the updates right here over the next few days!
As part of the anniversary celebrations, the SS Nomadic (the Titanic’s tender, built right here in Belfast alongside Titanic itself) has been opened up for hard-hat tours for just a couple of days. You might remember that back in Feb 2010 I was pretty much the last person on board Nomadic before it was closed for refitting (watch the movie here). So imagine my geeky joy at being back on board 15 months later, standing on the incredibly evocative decks where some of Titanic’s most famous passengers once stood, watching the beautiful old girl being nursed (well, drilled, riveted and welded) back to health.
I just can’t express how shiver-down-the-spiney it is to stand on board. At various points in history, that same metal has been under the feet of the Titanic’s first-class passengers (like the unsinkable Molly Brown), first-world-war troops, movie stars like Douglas Fairbanks, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, groovy French gourmets dining out in style on the River Seine… and the colony of rats who commandeered the ship when it was rusting slowly into extinction, unloved and forgotten. Yet beyond that century of use and misuse, the craftsmanship of the Belfast builders still shines through, original and strong. The metal panels (the same kind of metal as Titanic) and the clusters of rivets (the same kind of rivets as Titanic) have stood the test of time and wear – these were well-built ships. History to be proud of.
Chris