Today is Our Day…

2nd April is Belfast’s Titanic Day.   Construction complete, paint shining, propellers turning, boilers boiling, pistons pumping, she was taken on a few test laps of Belfast Lough – her sea trials – throughout the day on 2nd April, at the end of which she had her Board of Trade classification (her ship’s MOT certificate, good for one year from date of issue!)

Then at 8pm she sailed down Belfast Lough, steaming towards Southampton.  One last photograph was taken by a Belfast photographer – the iconic image above – before her story moved on to Southampton, Cherbourg, Cobh, and then, within only 12 days of that photograph being taken, the sickening crash, the frantic, tragic hours of her loss in the icy Atlantic.

But today is our day.  Many, many times over the past few weeks we’ve heard the Belfast motto – ‘She was all right when she left here!’.  Today is the ‘when’, and Titanic Quarter is the ‘here’, in that motto – so we’re going to mark the occasion with a special Dock Walk tonight.  Meeting at Dock Cafe at 7pm, walking past the Drawing Offices, Slipways and Thompson Dock – where she was designed, built, fitted-out and finished – to look down Belfast Lough in the same direction as that photographer 100 years ago, and mark the moment at 8pm when Titanic disappeared into the horizon.

See you there!