The highlight of the day was the Titanic Museum. Earlier in the trip, we discussed the idea that a place harbors memory. I had mentioned the text Beloved by Toni Morrison that I had been working with for the last few semesters, in which a character says “[the memories within a place are] never going away…and what’s more, if you go there…and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again” (Morrison 36). The Titanic museum achieves this and reminds its attendees of this throughout the exhibits.
For starters, the museum contains a thorough history of Belfast’s industries, going into detail about their rope and linen industries—so much detail, in fact, that by the time attendees make it to the first sign of ship making, they have a concept of the lives of Belfast’s people. This foundation in the Belfast industries also shows the interconnectedness of labor in the city, since the museum’s layout encourages attendees to make connections between the earlier two industries and ship making, where the ships make use of the ropes and linens. The foundation in what was occurring in Belfast culminates in establishing the amount of effort and Belfast manpower that was involved in constructing the Titanic, where all the major industries had a role, culminating in the Titanic’s fate being more tragic than I had realized before, since the Titanic was a symbol of Belfast’s abilities.

Additionally, throughout the museum, windows would make attendees privy to space in which the Titanic stood prior to its first voyage. After having seen who built the ship, models of the rooms that filled it and photos of the maiden voyage and its passengers, I could easily imagine the ship being in the empty shipyard—making the space in the shipyard a place.

I left with an eerie feeling about the experience. The museum disrupted some of my earlier ideas about the Titanic tragedy, but it mostly solidified the power of a space. While places like the GPO, St. Stephens Green and The Shelburne Hotel in Dublin all harbored remains of their extreme histories, I was mostly effected by the place of the Titanic. I think this mostly has to do with the response of the people who also inhabit the historic place. Whereas the Titanic Museum is soley dedicated to memorializing the ship and its passengers, Dublin’s historic sights mostly are part of everyday life for Dubliners: a post office, a recreational park, etc. I imagine in 15 years, when the shipyard area of Belfast is finished with its revitalization process (which it has posted plans for on the sight) that the place will become more like Dublin, where the memories will still remain but they will be slightly less intrusive—where it may be more difficult for them to pervade your senses in the way that the quote from Morrison’s text suggests.