Ship Of Dreams

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The Other Half had checked her step counter and decided I had walked her too far the previous day. It was not Barcelona mileage, but she reckoned that over 9 miles was pushing it a bit far on her dodgy foot. She insisted a bus day ticket was the order of the day. I checked the timetables. Buses early on a Sunday morning were best described as sparse, but we intercepted a 7 on the way into the city centre. I purchased our 2 all day tickets at £4 each. The plan was to link with one of the shiny new Glider buses that ferry folk across the city, with a view to arriving at the Titanic Experience around opening time. We were ahead of schedule and the G2 didn't start running until 9:30 am, but better early than late. The Titanic Experience opened in 2012 and was voted Europe's leading visitor attraction in 2016. The Eiffel Tower and the Colluseum were left trailing in the wake of the very impressive building sitting on the old Harland & Wolf site. The Glider G2 whisked us off over the Lagan and on towards the SSE Arena. The Belfast Giants ice hockey team play here and big bands are now coming back to the city to play this 11,000 seat arena. It opened in 2000 and has a multiplex cinema attached with a hotel complex. The original name was the Odyssey, but after a multi million refit in 2015 SSE moved in with a naming rights deal for the next 10 years. The next stop information on the bus still referred to it as Odyssey though. The bus was deadly quiet, but don't be fooled. The hordes will soon start to arrive by private car, taxi and tour bus - it isn't a leading tourist attraction for nothing. In the opening year, visitor numbers far exceeded the projections. It attracted nearly 500,000 visitors from outside Northern Ireland in the first 12 months. I had about 15 minutes peace to try and get some photographs, before the onslaught.

As readers of any of my previous blogs will know, I have recently been to Dundee. The new V & A building there is much acclaimed, but I can confidently say that it has nothing on the Titanic Experience. I think the V & A suffers from being surrounded by other tall structures, but there is no such mistake here. A huge expense of open space gives this building the correct platform to impress. The recalaimed land area here was known as Queens Island. It was the original home of the Pleasure Grounds - a recreational space for the city workers - before it was swallowed into the expanding Harland & wolf shipyards. The land use has now turned full circle back to a tourism use. The £100 million building was the work of US architect, Eric Kuhne. The design reflects the bow of a ship, although some ironically suggest that it resembles an iceberg. The exterior clad in aluminium - 3000 panels - glistens in the sun. A huge rusted metal name plate sits at the base - the name Titanic, simply cut out of it to announce your destination should it be necessary. In front of the building is Titanica. The Rowan Gillespie bronze sculpture depicts a diving female figure. I am sure it will evoke memories of the 1990s film.



The complex starts at a small dry dock, which houses SS Nomadic. We will return to the significance of Nomadic later. The main building is flanked by what is now the boutique Titanic Hotel. The red brick building started life as the offices of Harland & Wolf. It was here that the plans and designs for the huge new class of transatlantic liners were devised. On the other side of the main Titanic Experience building lies another huge open space. It drifts off towards the waterside and is marked by the outline of the hulls of the Titanic and her sister, Olympic. Harland & Wolf constructed 2 huge new dry docks to make them capable of building the new liners.



We had already purchased our tickets online, so it was a simple matter of clicking the booking reference into the self service ticket kiosk and out popped the necessary pieces of paper. The process was only slowed down by the US couple in front of us, who struggled badly with the instructions trying to buy tickets. The instructions suggested some international credit cards might not be recognised and it would be recommended to visit the manned ticket stations. The guy was having none of it though. He kept trying to repeat the action, determined that a US credit card was not to be defeated. Defeat was finally admitted and they moved off empty handed to the ticket points. The tickets are not cheap. At £18, it seemed at first to be a bit steep. I would conclude later that we had our value for money. The first recommendation I would give is to ignore the stated times for a visit. I would double it at least and allow yourself a minimum of 4 hours - longer if your schedule allows. There is a lot to read and depending on your speed and the numbers of other visitors around, progress at times can be a bit slow. The second recommendation involves luggage. A surprising number of visitors were on their way to the airport direct from their visit. There were a number of large lockers on the lower floor, but not large enough to accommodate trunks like passnegers might have been taking along with them on the Titanic in 1912 - so check your measurements. We headed in after a coffee shop stop and the obligatory photo being taken at the entrance. The concept of having your photo taken with some suitcases, as you in theory board a ship that will hit an iceberg in a few days and sink, is strange. I can't quite imagine sitting that one on the coffee table and reminiscing on the time the journey of a lifetime went horribly wrong - assuming of course you got a place in a lifeboat. The product is on sale at the end as you leave for a mere £10. In fairness, it was a decent shot. We didn't purchase.



The exhibition within the 12000 square metres is primarily a series of galleries dealing with the design, building, voyage, sinking and the legacy of the Titanic. The sister ship, Olympic, was only marginally smaller than Titanic and there were a great many similarities in the specifications and fitting of the 2 ships. My Grandad's brother travelled on one voyage on Olympic in the 1920s - a return trip from Southampton to New York. The joys of a life in the Merchant Navy. He clearly didn't take to it as a crew experience, as he was soon back on tramp steamers and never repeated the experience. The White Star Line had a vision of ultimate luxury for the passengers, but perhaps that didn't extend to crew conditions. There was a lot of reading and I can imagine that at really busy periods in school holidays, the sheer number of visitors would make this time consuming even if you were a speedy reader. The displays move from the lower floors by way of a lift. It is to demonstrate the height of the Arrol Gantry, that was built to enable construction of the 2 ships. The replica gantry is a quarter the size. The workers apparently also had electric lifts to access the upper sections of the gantry, but many were sceptical of this new technology. They preferred to climb ladders to their workstations. There are many photographs akin to those you see of workers building skyscrapers in New York or Chicago, casually eating sandwiches perched a few hundred feet up. The visit experience then descends through the recreated shipyard on what can only be described as a slow motion rollercoaster.



The actual launch was watched by a crowd of over 100,000 people and there were displays of artefacts relating to the excitement around that event. A series of displays showed the difference in the standard of passenger accommodation and photographs taken by a passneger who alighted at Cobh (or Queenstown as it was then), showed the stages of the maiden and only voyage from Southampton to Cherbourg to Cobh. The visit finished with the sinking and the aftermath.



The top floor of the Titanic building is an exhibition space. The centrepiece is a replica of the staircase from ship and film. The Other Half had booked us in for afternoon tea. She colects afternoon tea venues like I do football grounds. It was discounted with the purchase of the attraction ticket, so I smiled and went along with it. A jazz singer was providing the backdrop to the Sunday afternoon. I was surprised how busy it was and the place seemed pretty much booked up. It was a mix of visitors and locals celebrating special occasions. I can't honesly say it was up there with the best sandwich and cake experiences - I am a bit of a veteran now (and nothing will compare to Claridges) - but it was a perfectly pleasant way to rest my feet for a while. We headed back outside to head across to SS Nomadic. I stopped to pause to look at the huge cranes that had been in our eyesight all weekend. Samson and Goliath are immense and yellow. They have no association with Titanic and are fairly modern additions to the Belfast skyline. Goliath was completed in 1969 and Samson 5 years later. They were built by German firm, Krupps. Goliath stands 96 metres tall and is 10 metres shorter than Samson. In case you were wondering, the smaller Goliath sits slightly closer to Belfast city centre. The cranes received historic monument status in 1995, although whether they are required by the shipyards going forward is open to debate. We spent a good 30 - 40 minutes wandering round SS Nomadic. She was built as a tender for the Titanic and Olympic vessels to be based at Cherbourg harbour. The deep water berths there could not cope with he size of the new vessels, so Nomadic would tender the passnegers out to the big ships and give them a taste of the luxury they could expect on the transatlantic leg. The interior was a mini version of some of the fittings on the large ships.

We caught the Glider back to the city and watched in despair as the Service 7 disappeared round the corner with out us by about 30 seconds.The sky looked ominous, so we retreated into the Crown Liquor Saloon to take in some black stuff. The 1885 pub interior isn't entirely original and major restoration has been needed after "incidents". The Grade A listed building had a £500,000 National Trust input in 2007. There are 10 snugs where one can refresh behind closed doors and we were lucky enough to have one vacate right in front of us. It would hav been rude not to stay for another one.

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Photos

Titanic Hotel, Belfast
...... formerly the Harland & Wolf offices