The GCW Tour, A Few Bits of the UK and Ireland: Belfast Part 1, Titanic Belfast

Some of you who are smarter than me may have known off the top of your head that the three White Star Olympic class steam ships -- Titanic, Olympic, and Britannic -- were all built in Belfast. I know now, because I went to Belfast's very snazzy new museum documenting that fact...

Interestingly, there's a whole section of the city called "Titanic" (not surprisingly, covering the waterfront areas) which contains a variety of boat-related museums, as well as Titanic Studios, where Game of Thrones, among other North Ireleand based productions, are filmed. Anyway, back to the museum...

It starts with context, talking about why Belfast was chosen as the site for what would be the world's largest shipbuilding facilities. In short, at the turn of the century, Belfast was a thriving industrial city...

The displays move on from Belfast to talk about Titanic, and in addition to text, photos and video, you even get a "ride" on a little cart that hangs (and spins and goes up and down) to try to give an impression of what it was like to be a part of the turn of the century ship works...

At one point, you can look out the window and see where the ships were made. It's now covered in concrete, but they've put up light poles to lay out the two slips where the ships were constructed...

From there the displays present information about outfitting the boats, with mock-ups of the various staterooms...

...then turns to the initial sailing, the sinking of Titanic, the aftermath, its utility in Hollywood (and elsewhere)... 

...ending with the discovery of the wreck in 1985. 

Now you go outside for the best parts. First, your ticket to the museum gets you onto the Nomandic, the last existing White Star ship...

Nomadic was built to ferry passengers at Cherbourg from land to the Titanic, as Titanic was too big to make it to the port. With the breakout of World War I, Nomadic became a medical transport ship, and then a minesweeper in World War II, and then bounced around until it ultimately became a restaurant parked next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Eventually, Belfast bought it back, and restored it to it's original state (sans boilers, engines and drive train, since all of that had been ripped out, would be expensive to replace and wasn't actually needed). 

But now comes the best part. Half a mile from Titanic Belfast, the museum, is the Pump House...

When Titanic was built, it was built up next to the museum, but then it was floated down to a separate dry dock...

...to be outfitted and prepared for sail. The dry dock, and the pump house that moved the water in and out, are now museums, and they are very cool. Here's how it worked...

While the dry dock was empty, workers would review the boat plans and lay out these system of blocks to match the boats keel. These are steel, covered with wood, to prevent damage to the boat....

The dry dock would then be flooded, the boat brought in, and the gate closed...

It was possible to place the gate in one of two positions, with the outer position being needed for a boat as large as Titanic. In the photo above, the steel gate on the left is the original gate, in the inner most slot, while the concrete gate on the right is a replacement that was put in in the 1960s(?) occupying the outer slot. Both have now been fixed permanently in place. 

So now you've got a boat in the dry dock, floating above a series of blocks, with the gates shut behind it. Now they turn on two of the pumps (though there were three, only two would be used at once) to pump out the water...

The pumps originally ran on steam, were converted to electricity in the 1950s, and could empty the dock -- this dock...

...in eighty minutes. Eighty minutes! While the water was draining, there would be divers in the water making sure the boat settled correctly onto the blocks. (No doubt a very safe job.)

Amazing bit of engineering for 1910.

But now here's the cool part. That steel gate at the end?

The gate was made at the same time, by the same people, using the same materials, the same methods, and the same tools as Titanic. Thus, as the various signs, brochures and materials at the Pump House repeatedly emphasize, touching that steel gate is about as close as a person can come to touching Titanic...

And I thought that was pretty cool.