If you’re intrigued by the Titanic story, you’ll definitely want to add Belfast to your travel plans. Titanic Belfast, a museum and visitor centre, stands on the former Harland and Wolff shipyard where the ill-fated ship was designed and built. Titanic Belfast is the centrepiece of the regeneration of Belfast’s dockyards, now known as the Titanic Quarter.

Plan a full day

There’s so much to see that it’s worth allocating a full day for touring the facility with the ‘White Star Premium Pass.’

It includes self-guided tours of the exhibits and Titanic’s tender ship SS Nomadic where you can browse at your leisure. The Discovery Tour at specific times involves a guided walk through the Harland and Wolff Drawing Offices, and an outdoor walk around the historic slipways and plaza.

Both components represent good value, but if your experience is anything like mine, one day to tour Titanic Belfast is barely enough.

Titanic design elements incorporated

Architectural elements of the building include intricate details symbolic of the design of the RMS Titanic and its maiden voyage. The 38-metre building (the same height as the Titanic) replicates four hulls aligned on the four cardinal points of a compass.

The Titanic Memorial Garden contains four grassed lawns separated by timber decking. Each strip of lawn illustrates the proportion of Titanic’s victims and survivors from each of the passenger classes and crew. The relative proportions are easier to evaluate from above. The crew suffered the highest number of casualties, so that section of lawn is the largest.

The posts represent the stanchions of Arrol Gantry. A gantry is a steel structure straddling the workspace to assemble a ship. When Harland and Wolff and White Star Line decided to build two giant Atlantic liners, they cleared existing slipways and looked for an engineer capable of designing a ground-breaking new gantry under which both the Titanic and Olympian could be built at the same time. Sir William Arrol, whose company had built London’s Tower Bridge, was selected for the task.

Embedded into the slipway in white stone are two life-sized outlines of the main decks of the Titanic and Olympic. At night, blue light illuminates the outline to indicate the scale of the gantry and the Olympic-class sister ships. The benches represent the position of Titanic’s lifeboats.

The building boasts other embellishments such as a map embedded in the surrounding pavers showing Titanic’s voyage from Belfast to Southampton, Cherbourg, and Queenstown (now Cobh) before venturing out into the Atlantic.

Wooden benches circle the building, spaced in Morse code sequence. Moving clockwise around the plaza, they read ‘DE’ (this is) ‘MGY MGY MGY’ (Titanic’s call sign) ‘CQD CQD SOS SOS CQD’ — the distress message that Titanic sent after hitting an iceberg.

From above, Titanic Belfast is a star-shaped building, representing the logo of the White Star Line.

SS Nomadic, Titanic’s tender

Titanic’s original tender ship, the SS Nomadic, is berthed next to Titanic Belfast in the historic Hamilton Dry Dock. It’s the last remaining White Star Line ship in existence.

Built alongside the Titanic in 1911, the SS Nomadic boasts similar luxurious finishes. Compared to the Titanic’s 13 days of service, the Nomadic served for 57 years between 1911 and 1968. In April 1912, she performed one of her most famous tasks by transferring 172 first and second-class passengers from the shallow dockside in Cherbourg to the Titanic moored in deeper water offshore.

After service in two world wars and as a tender to the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth liners, the Nomadic spent her later years as an entertainment venue in Paris. She has now been restored to her glory days of 1912.

White Star passengers were strictly segregated by ticket class. While there were usually more second-class passengers than first-class passengers to be transferred, the indoor first-class passenger decks occupied 30% more space.

First-class passengers enjoyed bar service and relaxed in sumptuous mahogany-trimmed surroundings. Second-class passengers had access to a drinking fountain.

The caisson, a Harland and Wolff relic

The caisson on display at the Hamilton Dock in Belfast is an original built in 1867. A caisson is a dock gate. It’s one of the oldest remaining Harland and Wolff constructions. It is actually a vessel, according to the company’s shipping register. It fits into a groove in the stonework of the dry dock. When filled with water, it sinks and seals the lock. When pumped dry, it floats and is then capable of being towed clear of the lock.

Harland and Wolff Drawing Offices

The nearby Harland and Wolff Drawing Offices where the Titanic was designed is now part of the Titanic Hotel. Old photographs grace the walls of some of the areas open to the general public.

Titanic galleries

The Titanic Experience in the main building comprises a self-guided tour through nine interactive galleries.

From Belfast’s shipbuilding boom at the turn of the century to the discovery of the Titanic on the ocean floor in 1985, photographs, displays, a film in the underwater exploration theatre, and a ride through the shipbuilding yard all contribute to the remarkable story of the Titanic, a tribute to the workers and the city that built her.

Logistics

Tickets to the Titanic Experience must be booked online. Tickets are based on a timed entry with slots staggered every 10 minutes. Discounts are available for children, families, students, unemployed workers, and seniors. Essential carers are free. For information on admission prices and hours of operation, visit the Titanic Experience website.

The closest hotel is onsite, occupying part of the former offices of Harland and Wolff. Various packages are available. For example, a one-night package for two people costs 220 USD (October 2021) and includes Titanic Experience tickets, free overnight parking, and a “Titanic-sized breakfast.”

My travel plans were such that I could fly into Belfast and later take a bus to Dublin to meet up with friends. The direct service from the Belfast Europa Bus Centre to Dublin’s City Centre (or the Dublin Airport) was inexpensive and took two hours.

Titanic Belfast is a pleasant two-kilometre walk along the River Lagan from the city centre. Translink Metro operates the 94A bus service with the bus stop a short walk from the main building.

Have you visited Titanic Belfast? Would you like to add it to your travel plans? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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