Probus Hears About The Titanic And Her Times (short)
By the 1890s Britain was losing its global position to both Germany and the USA. To maintain influence in the world soft power was used to replace gun boat diplomacy. One way was to have the biggest, most luxurious ocean-going liners to attract the world’s wealthiest people. Who better to build such leviathans but the most famous ship builders in the world, Harland & Wolff of Belfast.
This background was explained by speaker Dr Stephen Goss, an Ulsterman whose great grandfather was a painter on RMS Titanic in this famous shipyard.
Three ships
It was the only place to build three ships for the White Star Line whose names became part of history, the Olympic, Titanic and the Britannic.
At 46,000 tons the Titanic was the largest ship in the world and was fitted out to the most luxurious level. Its safety measures considerably exceeded the maritime regulations of the day. The Marconi Company was employed to relay ship to shore messages using the latest Morse Code system.
The sinking of the Titanic is well known but the wreck’s discovery was complicated as the Marconi operator gave an incorrect position.
There had been several attempts to find the wreck, but Robert Ballard was financed by the US navy to use the Titanic’s quest as a cover to search for two nuclear submarines lost in the 1960s. They did not want the Russians to be aware of this search or its result.
Locating the two submarines left twelve days of the contract to find the Titanic and on 1st September 1985 they located a boiler in a debris field. The rest is history, culminating in June 2023 of Titan, the observation submersible, imploding with the loss of five lives.
The future of Harland & Wolff remains uncertain as on 16th September 2024 it was reported the company entered administrations for the second time in five years. The company is expected to continue operations normally while its non-core operations wind down.
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