Skip to footer

Belfast: reluctant birthplace of the Titanic

The city tried to ignore the Titanic until recently because of guilt over its loss, but is now celebrating the shipbuilding genius of Belfast workers at the new Belfast Titanic museum.

|
AP
The Titanic sailed out of Southampton, England, in 1912.
  • By Alf McCreary Correspondent

| Belfast, Northern Ireland

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

 Belfast was a byword for gloom during the Troubles that spanned from the late 1960s to late 1990s, but it is experiencing a new vitality.

Ironically this coincides with the anniversary of the tragedy of the RMS Titanic, which sank 100 years ago on April 15 with a loss of more than 1,500 lives. Belfast is set to commemorate this sad milestone with church services and other events.

The city, which tried to ignore the Titanic until recently because of misplaced guilt at her loss, is now celebrating the shipbuilding genius of the Belfast workers who made her the most advanced vessel in the world at the time. Two recent developments helped the Titanic to become a source of pride: the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by Robert Ballard and the 1997 blockbuster movie, “Titanic.”

Gradually it became respectable to talk about the Titanic in Belfast, and the city’s shipbuilding history will be celebrated during the Titanic Belfast Festival in April.

The new Titanic Belfast museum will be the world’s largest Titanic visitor attraction.

This befits a resurgent Belfast that was nominated by National Geographic Traveler magazine as one of the world’s top tourist attractions for 2012, and with the steady improvement of political relationships, the city looks set for much happier times.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Belfast: reluctant birthplace of the Titanic
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2012/0321/Belfast-reluctant-birthplace-of-the-Titanic
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe