This month Belfast’s W5 science centre will open Titanic: Designed and Built in Belfast, an exhibition that is part of the city council’s annual Titanic festival.
But these activities will be nothing compared with two years’ time when Belfast and other locations will be commemorating the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking.
The public fascination with the Titanic began immediately after it sank in the early hours of 15 April 1912 with the loss of more than 1,500 lives. The number of people who died, the wealth and status of many of the passengers and the shock of the largest liner ever built sinking on its maiden voyage all played a part.
Over the next hundred years this fascination has been fuelled by myth, rumour and speculation. The interest was increased further by the discovery of the wreck in 1985 and by the Oscar-winning 1997 film, Titanic.
In two years' time, the centenary of the sinking is expected to attract thousands of national and international visitors to the maritime locations associated with the ship.
Museums, heritage, arts and tourism organisations in Belfast, Southampton, Liverpool and the Irish port of Cobh, the places most strongly associated with the ship, have formed Titanic Cities, a marketing and planning initiative.
They have recently been joined by Cherbourg, the French port where the Titanic stopped after leaving Southampton.
The aim of Titanic Cities is to coordinate commemorative events and exhibitions and to share resources and expertise.
Southampton and Cobh have council-run museum services, while Liverpool is a national museum but will work closely with Liverpool City Council to deliver the 2012 initiative, drawing on the experience of the European Capital of Culture year in 2008.
In Belfast, a £97m Titanic attraction will open in 2012. The city council has contributed £10m to the project, but the venue will be owned and operated by an independent charitable trust.
National Museums Northern Ireland has a large Titanic collection and a permanent exhibition devoted to the subject at the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum.
Planning is in its early stages, but there will be a diverse range of events across the UK and Ireland drawn from Titanic-related artefacts, documents, photographs and oral history. Where possible, memorials and gravestones, buildings and dockside sites will be renovated and made more accessible.
The main source of information about the centenary events will be the Titanic Cities website, which is being launched later in the year.
Its development is being overseen by Belfast City Council and it will provide information on what is happening in each location, with visitors to the site able to read blogs, ask questions and discover more about events and stories around the ship, its passengers and crew.
Each location has a different connection to the Titanic and programmes will reflect this. Southampton has a wealth of oral history material, whereas in Cobh the Titanic story is told within the wider context of Irish emigration, particularly at the Cobh Heritage Centre.
Formal commemorative services are planned, as well as cultural events such as exhibitions, talks, trails, dances, dramas, projections and screenings of Titanic-themed films.
Titanic was built in Belfast, registered in Liverpool and sailed from Southampton. It then visited Cherbourg, while Cobh in Ireland was the ship’s last port of call before heading across the Atlantic, where it hit an iceberg and sank 700 nautical miles east of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Titanic Cities hopes to work with Halifax, where many of the victims are buried, and New York, its intended destination and the city where the survivors were taken.
Working collaboratively provides opportunities for cross-marketing and the chance for museums to raise their national and international profile. There will also be lasting legacies beyond the 2012 events.
Belfast and Southampton are building new maritime museums where the Titanic will play a central role.
Partnership working will benefit concurrent and future events such as the Cultural Olympiad and the centenary of the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania, an ocean liner that was torpedoed by a German U-boat, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard.
Belfast
“Each place has its own angle on the Titanic story and for us, it’s the ship,” says Gerry Copeland, events manager at Belfast City Council.
April 2012 will see the opening of the Titanic Signature Project, a £97m visitor attraction on the site of the old Harland and Wolff shipyard and slipways, where the Titanic was built and launched. Its five galleries will be devoted to Belfast’s maritime history, and will address the wider story of the growth of the city.
“There will be a lot going on in 2012 and the main aim for Titanic Cities is to coordinate events for April,” says Copeland. “It’s going to have major public impact and there’s a great willingness to share resources such as artefacts for touring exhibitions.”
Belfast has a headstart, he says, because it has held an annual Titanic festival for the past ten years. Copeland refers to Belfast’s strong cultural connections with Halifax and other parts of the Americas because of the Irish and Scottish diaspora.
“Up to half a million people could visit in 2012, and we aim to capitalise on the visitors and teams who will be here for the Olympics at the same time.
“We also want to engage key people from Titanic’s more recent history, such as Bob Ballard, the oceanographer who found the Titanic wreck, and film director James Cameron,” Copeland says. “The point is to work together so we are not trying to engage the same people at the same time.”
Liverpool
The Titanic never visited Liverpool, but it had strong links with the city. The headquarters of the ship’s owners, the White Star Line, were in Liverpool. The company’s co-founder Thomas Ismay and son Joseph Bruce Ismay (who survived the Titanic tragedy) lived on Merseyside, as did the captain, Edward Smith.
Rachel Mulhearn, the director of Merseyside Maritime Museum, says: “In addition to supporting city-wide programmes, National Museums Liverpool is planning to create a major new exhibition about the Titanic at the maritime museum. This will be a big contribution to the city’s commemorations in 2012.”
The decision to work collaboratively echoes the Tall Ships festival, where all the maritime cities that have hosted the event pass on their expertise and experience, says Judith Feather, head of events for Culture Liverpool, the organisation developing the cultural programme for the city following the European Capital of Culture year in 2008.
“It’s about spreading good practice and standardisation,” says Feather. “The big lesson from 2008 was how working together benefited everyone – the cultural organisations and the visitors.
"The legacy is that everybody now wants to work together and the Titanic centenary is a fantastic opportunity to deliver an exciting and meaningful, but also safe, experience for the public.”
As well as formal commemorative events there will be art, dance and musical activities, including the Broadway musical Titanic performed by a local operatic society and a series of dance events with the city’s creative organisations linking up.
Feather says: “The final themed year from the Capital of Culture year is health and wellbeing and that runs throughout 2012. We hope to recreate the Titanic ballroom in the city centre in April 2012.”
Southampton
Southampton was the parting port for Titanic and home to most of the crew. Southampton Maritime Museum has lots of material and oral history about the Titanic, and there are also memorials, walks and cemetery sites connected with the tragedy.
The Titanic story is a major element of Southampton’s planned Sea City Museum, which is scheduled to open in time for the April 2012 centenary.
“The primary emphasis for Titanic Cities is marketing and internet access,” says Janet Owen, the former arts and heritage manager, at Southampton City Council, who recently moved to Hampshire County Council.
“The project has taken an inter-disciplinary form for April 2012. We are building on existing approaches and coordinating with the other sites and sharing knowledge and networks.”
The programme will include music, theatre and guest lectures as well as museum-based events and exhibitions. “Museums and galleries in Southampton are part of the arts and heritage service so we are used to working with other organisations,” says Owen.
“The Titanic is an important international as well as local event, with many opportunities to tie into the Cultural Olympiad in the same year. We hope to raise our profile both nationally and internationally and strengthen relationships with other cities.”
Other local partners include the University of Southampton; Associated British Ports, which owns the dockside land from where the Titanic sailed; and Southampton Heritage and Arts People, an organisation that encourage partnership working and diversity in the city.
“We have strong partnerships and a clear form of purpose and there is time to work up the detail,” says Owen.
Cobh
The Irish port of Cobh, known as Queenstown in 1912, was the last port of call for the Titanic before it set sail for New York. It anchored offshore at the mouth of the harbour, and of the 123 people who boarded, 79 died.
“Cobh is an integral part of the Titanic story,” says Paraig Lynch, town clerk at Cobh Town Council, and the centenary is an opportunity to put Cobh on a bigger stage.
“The Titanic passengers were among the 1.5 million people who emigrated through Cobh and they belong to the rich maritime and heritage stories we have to tell.”
A central attraction in 2012 will be the photography exhibition of Father Browne at the Cobh Heritage Centre. Browne was a local Jesuit priest who boarded the Titanic at Southampton and disembarked at Cobh.
His photographed of the journey give an insight into life aboard the ship. There are also plans to restore the dilapidated White Star Wharf where passengers boarded the Titanic tender.
A memorial glass wall inscribed with the names of the 123 passengers who boarded at Cobh is planned for a location from which the anchorage point is visible.
“The memorial will be a permanent reminder so the work of Titanic Cities will continue beyond 2012,” says Lynch.
“We are all ports and we have much more than Titanic in common. We are building up relationships which will be useful for future co-working, such as the centenary of the sinking of the Lusitania, which was torpedoed off the coast of Cork in 1915.”
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist