Harland & Wolff Shipyard, Belfast

Launched without a name

At 12.15 on Wednesday 31 May 1911, the bare hull of the Titanic began to slide stern first from Slipway No. 3 at Harland & Wolff into the River Lagan. It took about a minute. Twenty-two tonnes of soap and tallow had been spread on the slipway to ease her down.

No bottle was broken. In keeping with the White Star Line's policy, the ship was not formally named or christened with champagne. Some 100,000 people watched, and present were Lord Pirrie, head of Harland & Wolff, J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, and the American financier J. Pierpont Morgan, whose International Mercantile Marine controlled it.

A gantry built for two giants

Nothing in the yard had been big enough. Harland & Wolff demolished three slipways and built two new ones, the largest ever made, and over them the Scottish firm of Sir William Arrol, builders of the Forth Bridge and Tower Bridge, raised a steel gantry 69 metres high and 260 metres long, weighing more than 6,000 tonnes.

The two liners rose under it almost side by side. The keel of Olympic was laid on 16 December 1908, that of Titanic on 31 March 1909. Some 15,000 men worked at the yard, where safety precautions were rudimentary at best, and just before the launch a worker was killed by a falling piece of wood.

Olympic sailed the same afternoon

The launch was only half of the day's business. Later that day the completed Olympic left Belfast for Liverpool, her port of registration, some 29 months after her keel was laid.

Titanic went to be fitted out. She was given extra first-class cabins on B Deck and a Café Parisien that Olympic lacked, changes that made her slightly heavier and let her claim to be the largest ship afloat. Her completion was delayed when Olympic came back for repairs after a collision in September 1911.

In the early hours of 15 April 1912, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, she sank after striking an iceberg. About 1,500 of the 2,208 people aboard died, among them Thomas Andrews, the yard's chief naval architect.

Why Belfast is proud of a ship that sank

For Northern Ireland the Titanic is its best-known contribution to world history, and a pride shared across its communities. The yard had built ships for the White Star Line since 1867, and in 1911 the Arrol Gantry dominated the city's skyline.

The memory is not simple. The yard's workforce was largely Protestant, a sensitive point in a divided city, and the launch cannot be separated from the deaths of 1912.

The ground has taken the ship's name. Queen's Island, where both liners were built, is now called the Titanic Quarter, and the Titanic Belfast museum stands on it.

Sources

• Wikipedia (en): Titanic
• titanicbelfast.com