Article Part 1
Titanic is the most famous ship in history. She was built in Belfast at the leading edge of Edwardian shipbuilding technology in the largest and most advanced shipyard of the day. Her resonating story is one of the epic tales of modern times.

Enshrining the values and social fabric of the era, Titanic was a microcosm of western civilisation and its misplaced certainties in a gilded age before the First World War. With unknowing irony the White Star Line proclaimed that Titanic and her sistership Olympic ‘will rank high in the achievements of the 21st century’ and that ‘time given to slumber and rest will be free from noise or other disturbance… in these vessels the interval between the old life and the new is spent under the happiest possible conditions.’

The wreck of Titanic was a mighty blow to the self-confidence of the age.  The great liner, a signifier of the civilised world, now lay broken in the deep ocean floor. Millionaires, emigrant poor and her labouring crew had gone down with the ship. Almost 1500 souls perished in the icy Atlantic waters and their appalling loss generated the first international phenomenon of public grieving with its supporting commercialisation and merchandising. 

For many in 1912, the disaster was rich in symbolic significance. Titanic’s catastrophic sinking called into question the established order of things. It deeply troubled those that believed in a good and merciful God. Others regarded it as a fateful warning, or confirmed their belief in divine retribution for human conceit and arrogance. It seemed to demonstrate the folly of human presumption and vanity that nature could be a conquest of science. 

To be continued…