Photo by Ton Koene
It is a rainy day but I huddle on the foredeck with the other visitors onboard MV Mona to cruise past the docks where Titanic was launched and where the SS Nomadic, the last remaining White Star Line ship, still lies.
Derek Booker, who runs the Lagan Boat Company, takes me through a history of Belfast’s shipyards, saying that “the founders were the Bill Gates of their days”.
We pass Queen’s Island, built with the mud dredged from the river and where Titanic was built. From the slipway, we can look directly up at the Titanic Experience building. It stands in the middle of a “Titanic Quarter” that is blooming with shiny new apartments, coffee shops and an urban sports park. Dominating one end is the fast-expanding Titanic Studios, where interior scenes for Game of Thrones are shot.
Opposite is the 27-story Obel Tower, the tallest building in Ireland. “American visitors always laugh at that,” says Derek. “Titanic would be three and half times taller if you up-ended it.” He takes us through the ship’s other technical wonders – “She could do 23 knots, that’s faster than any ship in this harbor today” – before a description of her fatal end.
Derek is in no doubt about where the fault lies for hitting an iceberg. “Captain Smith was in bed, having given orders to his First Officer to go full speed ahead,” he says. “The blame must rest squarely on his shoulders, not the men who built [her], who sadly went to their graves thinking it was their fault after the world’s press turned on them.
“If you crash your Ferrari into a brick wall, you don’t blame Ferrari. It was the driver, not the builder.”
The most beautiful part of Northern Ireland is, without question, the coastline: tiny old cottages, ruins of even older castles, narrow winding roads, stone walls and the many shades of green in the countryside resulting from the plentiful rain.
From Torr Head, on the coast of Northern Ireland, I can see the lighthouse on Scotland’s Mull of Kintyre, only 17 km away.
Belfast's University area and the booming Cathedral Quarter both show the city's energy, while the City Hall, opened in 1906, is a solid testimony to the ambition of the city fathers in other times.
In Northern Ireland, I drive around the coast road to the pretty harbor of Ballintoy and beyond, passing the Giant’s Causeway and dramatic Dunluce Castle, clinging precariously to a cliff edge.
An outing on the ferry to Rathlin Island, the northernmost point of Northern Ireland, gives me an idea of just how rough its waters can be.
Hello Northern Ireland, bouncing back from “The Troubles” that scarred its cities and both sides of its divided community for 30 years. Now its beautiful landscape is becoming better known as a film location in Game of Thrones while its capital of Belfast is embracing the Titanic, once a symbol of failure, as a story of the city’s energy and skills.
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