Day 20 – August 6 – Belfast “Titanic”

by The Travel Guy

Today is Ron’s first round of the Squash tournament at the Belfast Boat Club. In Ron’s pool of the tournament there are Firemen, Police and Corrections Officers from China, England, Germany, Ireland, Spain, USA and of course our hosts N. Ireland.

Ron in his first match of the tournament

We’ve never been to squash at these games before but we quickly learned that there is much more to the games than the competition on the court.

Ron trying to look around his 2nd opponent who hit the ball very hard

The viewing area for Ron’s games is pretty small so we quickly made friends with the others in the tournament and their wives.

Ron and his second opponent

Ron played well, but the best-of-three game format for the opening round didn’t play to Ron’s strength of stamina.  He ended the day 1-2 but is looking forward to the best-of-five format tomorrow.

After Ron’s games were finished for today we headed downtown to see the Titanic exhibition in the Belfast Docklands.

The Titantic Belfast exhibit that was completed in 2012

In 2012 they completed a wonderful exhibit “Titanic Belfast” just in time for the 100^th Anniversary of its fateful voyage. There are two sites in the exhibit, about a 20 min walk apart: the brand new building built specifically for the exhibit and the original dock yards used to build these enormous ships.

Ron relaxing at the river end of the Thompson Graving Dock which was used to outfit the Titanic

A reconstruction of the bow of the Titanic from the original drawings

The Belfast Harbour Commissioners started early in the 1900’s to build Thompson Graving Dock as the biggest in the world.

William James Pirri controlled the Harland & Wolff shipbuilding firm and J. Bruce Ismay was the Chairman of the White Star Line.  Ismay’s goal for his company was to compete against the Cunard Line.  It is said that Pirri and Ismay collaborated over dinner to create the Titanic and her sister ships. Their discussions centered around how to balance Speed vs. Quality of Accommodation.  How did they arrive at nearly 883 ft as the length of their new ships?  Long enough to span the crests of three of the Atlantic Ocean’s wave crests.

This longer ship required the Harbour Commissioners to extend the original length of the dry dock in order to accommodate the new Olympic class vessels.  It became a fitting landmark for what was the largest ships of their time. At the time, H&W employed nearly 10,000 people building ships in the Belfast docklands. To put that in perspective, the population of Belfast in 1900 was approx. 350,000. So the dockyards were a major contributor to the local economy. In contrast to the dockyards, the Linen industry employed 65,000 people, predominantly women, and most of the Linen industry residing in Belfast.

The three pumps that could empty the Graving Dock in 100 minutes. That’s 230,000 gallons per minute

After a 20 minute walk we reached “The Pumphouse” that was used to remove the 23 million gallons of water from the Dry Dock in just 100 minutes. Pretty impressive when you see just how much water that represents. It was amazing to stand at the bottom of the dock and imagine that the Titanic once stood there.  The Titanic was the second ship of three, after the Olympic, to be built, the third was the Britannic . Design changes that were made during the building of the Olympic were incorporated into the Titanic.

Marsha overlooking the Graving dock, notice the tiny staircase at the end of the dock that holds back the Lagan River.

As you stand at the bottom and look up 35 ft to the top of the dry dock it’s difficult to imagine that the Titanic stood 175 ft from the bottom of it’s keel to the top of it’s funnels.

The staircase against the steel plated “dam” holding back the Lagan River. The same dam seen in the picture of the Titanic’s propellers

The Titanic’s propellers next to the steel plated dam holding back the Lagan River

The draught, or portion of the ship below the waterline, would just barely fit in the dry dock when the Titanic was fully loaded.

The small boy in the foreground adds perspective along with the supports for the keel and the gigantic H & W Goliath gantry in the back ground

We then walked back to the amazing building designed to showcase the Titanic. The architect’s general idea was to arrange the floors of the building to mimic the decks on the Titanic.  As you work your way up you move from the boilers to the luxury cabins.  You start by learning a little bit about Belfast in the late 19^th century and this helps to provide some context to how significant the dockyard and indeed these brand new, world-class ships were to Belfast at the time. Then they take you up in an elevator, as if you’re rising up into the gantry. that was used to move the steel and components into place as the Olympic and Titanic were being built, side by side, from the keel to the top of the superstructure. The gantry was absolutely huge, 270 ft wide, 840 ft long and nearly 230 ft. high. The H & W logo is still visible in on the Belfast waterfront adorning their two gigantic gantry cranes named Samson and Goliath.  They stand 348 ft. and 315 ft. high respectively.  Amazingly we didn’t snap any pictures, so I’ve borrowed this one from Wikipedia.

H & W’s Samson and Goliath gantries that are used today

There is even a short ride (like you’re in an amusement park) that tries to give you a birds eye view of the workers as they affixed the 3 million rivets that held the Titanic together. Each rivet was heated in a forge to the point that it was orange hot. The rivet was pulled from the forge and slid across to the person who would use a pair of tongs to pick it up and place it in the holes of the two adjacent plates. A sledge hammer was held on the outside while two men would hammer it from the inside until it was flattened over and tightly holding the overlapping steel plates together. It’s easy to imagine the din that was created as this procedure was being repeated all over the ship. As you continue to the upper floors of the building you start to see more of the opulence experienced by those with the money and time to travel by ship.

The Titanic (left) and Olympic (right) under construction

After viewing the dry dock and part of the Titanic exhibition Ron and Jeff started trying to rationalize the photos of the Titanic and Olympic, side-by-side as they were being built. It was easy to think that both ships they were constructed under the 230 ft. high gantry from start to finish.  Even though the Thompson Graving Dock is talked about as being expanded to accommodate this new class of liner. Initially it appeared that the location where the two ships were started and finished were one and the same, but with the dimensions of the dry dock at 850 ft. long, 128 ft wide and 44 ft deep meant it could only hold the Olympic or Titanic one at a time.  We were able to determine that the ships were built just south of the Graving Dock, slid into the Lagan River and then directed into the dry dock to be “fitted out’.

Just after it’s initial launch the Titanic still needs to be outfitted with the funnels

This old photo shows the Titanic in the Graving Dock with the pumphouse building that we toured on the left

At the end of the tour you move into a movie theatre to view some of the footage taken by the submarines as they explored the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, two miles beneath the surface.  After the movie you’re invited down to the glass floor where you can look down as if you’re actually in one of the submersibles hovering over the ship.  A very cool way to end the whole Titanic Belfast experience.

We ate back at the hotel and we were joined by one of the squash players that Ron faced today and his wife.  They are “locals” and it was very interesting to learn a little more about Belfast.