It was Christmas Day of 1987 when my obsession with the Titanic began. My grandfather, Jim Jackson, a navy man with many daring seafaring tales of his own, was given an early edition of The Discovery of the Titanic written by Dr Robert Ballard, who had found the wreck in the Atlantic two years before.
Something about the grainy pictures of boilers and bows, combined with the tale of the unlucky liner sinking on its maiden voyage to New York in April 1912, sparked my six-year-old imagination. Grandad Jim never did get his book back — I still have it — and I’ve been a committed “Titanorak” ever since.
That’s why, nearly four decades on, I’m back at Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, on Queen’s Island in the east of the city to visit the places where the “Ship of Dreams” was designed, built and fitted out by the Harland & Wolff shipyard, itself in the news this week for another sinking, this time into administration.
I’m sitting in the first-class ladies’ powder room on board the SS Nomadic, one of the exhibits at Titanic Belfast, the museum built next to the dock where the Titanic was constructed. The Nomadic was the tender (water taxi) that ferried the Titanic’s wealthy passengers from the dock at Cherbourg, where the Titanic sailed after Southampton: it is the Titanic’s little sister, built to the same standard in the same shipyard.
I’m gawping at the covers of two iron portholes bearing the five-pointed insignia of history’s most infamous shipping company, the White Star Line, and marvelling at the original wooden panelling dating from 1911. The Nomadic — the last surviving White Star Line vessel in the world — is the closest a Titanic dork like me is ever going to get.
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But despite my excitement at the Nomadic’s finer details, the tiny 1,200-tonne ship (the Titanic weighed about 46,000 tonnes) isn’t even the main event for me on this visit. That marvel is across the dockyard, inside Titanic Belfast’s main building, where a queue is forming around the glass case containing the Titanic’s hottest discovery: a pocket watch. It was presented to Sir Arthur Henry Rostron — the captain of the RMS Carpathia, the ship that came to the Titanic’s aid — by three of the Titanic’s widows (including 18-year-old Madeleine Astor, newly married to 47-year-old John Jacob Astor IV, then one of the world’s richest men) in 1912 as a thank you. A dinky 18th-century timepiece made by Tiffany & Co, it’s on loan from the Wiltshire auction house Henry Aldridge & Son until the end of October, when it will likely be sold to a private collector. “We were able to go back into the records of The New York Times and find the news report of when the watch was presented to Rostron,” Andrew Aldridge, managing director of the auction house, tells me. “I’m expecting it to go for upwards of £80,000.”
The pocket watch however, in its sealed box, isn’t typical of the other exhibits here. Last year the centre had a £4.5 million refurbishment and now all nine galleries are visually immersive and interactive, and on a Saturday morning the attraction is heaving. By 11am I count 16 coaches in the car park and I met visitors from America, Japan and France. “I just want to see the clock at the top of the grand staircase,” one precocious seven-year-old says, looking me dead in the eyes when I ask what he likes about the Titanic. I’m delighted to see the next-gen enthusiasts out in force, and at the weekend too.
I’m not surprised it’s so busy — 112 years after the sinking, interest in the ship is still feverish, with recent TV outings including Titanic in Colour and 10 Mistakes that Sank the Titanic. There’s even Titanique, a stage musical opening at London’s Criterion in December, the strapline for which is “Nothing on earth could come between Jack and Rose. Except for Celine Dion.” I can’t wait, obviously.
I was last at Titanic Belfast pre-refurb in 2021 and while lots has changed some of the original exhibits have been retained: the explanation of Belfast’s role in linen and ship making provides context about early 20th-century life in the city, while a cable car ride through a reimagining of the gantry workshop where the Titanic was built offers a sense of the daily struggles for the some 3,000 men working who built it, eight of whom lost their lives before the ship had even set sail.
There’s an emotional change of pace when you arrive at a wall covered in the names of all 1,512 people lost and the 713 who were saved. From here on, the exhibition becomes a more poignant journey. The Never Again gallery charts all the ways the Titanic’s sinking changed international maritime rules: more lifeboats, an International Ice Patrol established in 1914 and still operating today, plus lifeboat capacity for all passengers on all ships.
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The penultimate gallery — the Ship of Dreams — is an immersive light and sound show that rounds up the ship’s story from construction to catastrophe. In the centre of the two-storey room and suspended from the ceiling is a 7.6m scale model of the Titanic that spins 360 degrees and a backdrop of floor-to-ceiling images of the ship, the dockyard and an iceberg. Over an orchestral soundtrack, stories of the Titanic’s passengers are voiced, while beneath my feet, under a glass floor, images shot from above the Titanic wreck float past; I peer down at boilers, holes where funnels should be and the collapsed mast of the bow. Across the room a violin belonging to Wallace Hartley — the band leader who went down with the ship — retains just two strings and appears suspended in mid-air. It’s so powerful that some leave in tears. Not me. There was just a bit of dust in my eye.
After all that emotion you would think I would be Titanic-ed out, but no, there’s still more to discover — a tour of the exterior of the museum, including slipway number three where the Titanic was built. The tour also takes in parts of the Titanic Hotel Belfast opposite, housed in Harland & Wolff’s former HQ, where the Titanic and its sisters were designed, and where I’m spending the night.
“Harland & Wolff used their office to showcase their designs and the rear staircase here is in a similar mould to the iron and woodwork of the Titanic’s first-class grand staircase,” my guide Natasha Hall explains. “They were saying to potential customers ‘if you think our offices are great, imagine how brilliant our ships are’ and that extended down to the loos — during the restoration works before the hotel opened [in 2017], Villeroy & Boch tiles were found in the directors’ toilets that were also used to line the Titanic’s swimming pool.”
Along every corridor of the Titanic Hotel is another bit of Harland & Wolff history. In the office once occupied by the Titanic’s designer Thomas Andrews, I open a drawer and find a souvenir issue of The Shipbuilder from June 1911; photographs on the walls show the company’s furniture and French polishing departments from 1899, while in my bedroom, which overlooks the slipways, there are reproductions of White Star Line’s adverts.
For the full Belfast Titanic experience you can take a self-guided walking tour from the east over the River Lagan, which finishes at the Titanic memorial at Belfast City Hall. But skip that. Instead, walk 20 minutes north to the far end of Queen’s Island to Titanic Distillers (titanicdistillers.com). While it won’t be producing single malts until at least 2026, in the meantime there’s vodka and the guide Brian Cunning’s tour of the building, which adds a few more secrets to the Titanic’s story, as you sample artfully produced spirits made where the ship was kitted out with all its interior fixtures and funnels.
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“Belfast was built on shipbuilding and linen mills, but there was a third ‘secret’ industry — whiskey,” Cunning tells me. “Millions of gallons a year were produced at the turn of the 20th century but prohibition in America and rising costs killed off the whiskey trade by the 1930s. Now we’re bringing it back with the first new distillery in the city for 90 years.”
The ship might have been lost over a century ago but huge interest in Titanic’s story has helped revive this previously derelict part of town. Here’s to the next 100 years of Titanic fans.
Laura Jackson was a guest of Titanic Belfast (from £25pp, including the Nomadic; titanicbelfast.com); Titanic Hotel Belfast, which has room-only doubles from £159 (titanichotelbelfast.com); and Tourism Ireland (ireland.com)
Where to eat and what to see in Belfast
The restaurant: Stock Kitchen & Bar, St George’s Market
On the first floor of St George’s Market, Danny Millar’s chic brasserie is the place for a big Irish seafood stew — it comes in a bowl crammed with prawns, crab claws, hake, monkfish and mussels, with a slab of sourdough too. Sit on the outside terrace and you can watch over the Victorian market, open Friday to Sunday. The bar with its skylights and giant fanlight window is an equally enjoyable space for a house Fog Cutter cocktail made with rum, gin and cognac with lemon juice (mains from £28; stockbelfast.com).
The chic bar: Amelia Hall, Howard Street
Amelia Hall is equal parts bar, pizzeria and music venue, and so new they hadn’t taken manufacturers stickers off the loo seats on our visit. The huge space has a warehouse-like feel with exposed ducts and cocktails from negronis to an alcohol-free “noperol” spritz. The pizzas are generous (we liked the pepperoni with hot honey) but it’s the small plates that stand out, such as ’nduja and mozzarella arancini and pepperoni meatballs (mains from £12.50; ameliahall.bar).
The trad pub: Maddens
The 1960s ceramic light shades, fairy lights and low-slatted wooden ceiling makes Maddens feel troublingly like your nan’s sitting room. Get there early (and have dinner first) to grab a table or you’ll be left standing around the disused payphone by the Pringles crisp dispenser. That said, it’s worth the bother if you’re a live music fan — things typically don’t get going here until after 11pm when the trad music sessions start. Drinks other than Guinness are available, but why bother? (pints from £4; 74 Berry Street).
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The overlooked must-see: Botanic Gardens
Belfast’s fine Botanic Gardens were first established in 1828, although they didn’t fully open to the public until the 1890s. Today you can visit the 28-acre site year-round for the Victorian Palm House, built in cast iron by Richard Turner (later responsible for the Great Palm House at Kew Gardens) and a Tropical Ravine for some of the world’s oldest plants, including 200-year old cycads and a rarely flowering Australian lily (free; belfastcity.gov.uk).
The cool gallery: The MAC
The Metropolitan Arts Centre, aka the MAC, has seven storeys of galleries and focuses on contemporary arts with dance classes and activities for families too. There’s an evolving line-up of performances and talks from writers and comedians, as well as temporary exhibitions often from Northern Irish artists — although past displays have included works by Phil Collins and Gilbert & George (entrance free, ticket event prices vary; themaclive.com).
Three other places with Titanic connections
The White Swan Hotel, Alnwick, Northumberland, UK
The Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic, was much luckier, remaining in service both as a liner and a troop ship in the First World War, earning it the nickname “Old Reliable”. When the ship was scrapped in 1935 its fixtures and fittings (essentially the same as those on the Titanic), were sold. The owners of the White Swan Hotel, a 300-year old coaching inn in Alnwick, were one of the purchasers and today guests can still see the Olympic’s rear first-class staircase, plus oak panels from the dining room in the Olympic Suite restaurant.
Details B&B doubles from £90 (classiclodges.co.uk)
Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
In the immediate aftermath of the Titanic’s sinking, White Star Line chartered two ships, the CS Mackay-Bennett and the CS Minia from the port at Halifax, to search for the bodies of those lost. Today the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic holds some items recovered from the Titanic including part of a wood-panelled arch, bowls from first class and a mahogany deckchair. Under ten minutes’ walk away, the Cambridge Suites Hotel has modern rooms with kitchenettes.
Details B&B doubles from £116 (cambridgesuiteshalifax.com). Fly to Halifax
Titanic Museum Attraction, Branson, Missouri, US
If you’re going to build a Titanic museum, why not make it in the shape of the ship itself — complete with an iceberg? That’s exactly what the Titanic explorer John Joslyn, who set up this attraction in the landlocked state of Missouri did, although it’s now owned by the group that runs Dolly Parton’s dinner show Stampede. Get your photo taken on a replica grand staircase and see letters from J Bruce Ismay (White Star Line’s former managing director) and Captain Rostron (the Carpathia’s captain) plus an original lifejacket (£29; titanicbranson.com). Savannah House in the north of the city is a ten-minute drive from the museum.
Details Room-only doubles from £147 (savannahhousebranson.com). Fly to Branson-Springfield via Atlanta
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