Category Archives: June 19

Belfast

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Yesterday we left Dublin and went to Belfast. I have to admit, I was pretty bummed about leaving Dublin because I loved it so much there but at the same time I was excited to go to Belfast. This is a new place for me, so the excitement had been building since we got here. The first thing I noticed about Belfast was the beautiful rolling hills and mountains in the background. This was absolutely stunning, and it almost felt like home. Afterwards we went to Belfast City Hall which is what is pictured above. I immediately noticed the stunning architecture inside. It looked extremely victorian and meticulously built, and I heard Karson describe it as being very “colonial” which I think hits the mark. I thought it was really cool to learn about another country’s government. I thought it was really interesting that they choose a new mayor every year, and the lady described that Belfast does this because they want each mayor to be fully invested for the people. They do not feel here that a mayor can be as effective if they’re in office for a longer period of time. This opened my eyes a little bit into how the other world sees things. There are lots of things that people in Europe do that Americans do not and I find the little quirks very interesting. My favorite part of the tour was when our tour guide Julie (who was adorable, by the way) was so excited to tell us that it was the first time that there were only women in the major spots of the city council. I thought this was so powerful, and as a feminist it made me incredibly happy that this had happened.

The Titanic Museum in Belfast

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The Titanic Museum in Belfast is slightly misleading insofar as it encompasses much more than the Titanic tragedy. The first portion of the exhibit is dedicated to an exploration of early-twentieth-century Belfast, which was nicknamed Linenopolis because of its linen production. It was fascinating to read about linen production and to see its production in various phases. The museum engages visitors on a variety of tactile and technological levels as early-twentieth-century Belfast comes alive through multiple moving screens, interactive maps, and still exhibits.

There’s a fun 4D ride halfway through the exhibit that allows visitors to see, hear, and feel what it may have been like to work on the Titanic’s hull. I enjoyed seeing examples of class-based living quarters and reading survival accounts of the sinking.

A few things in the exhibit reminded me of themes we’ve discussed over the last few weeks. In the portion of the exhibit dedicated to the building of the Titanic, a narrator mentions that the Titanic was often referred to as the pride of Belfast. In this way, the city’s identity was intertwined with this feat of engineering. Tickets were given away and sold so that spectators could witness the Titanic being launched. This representation of Belfast as a lively, thriving city stands in marked contrast to the paralysis of Dublin represented in much of the literature we’ve read and studied.

Something else that stood out to me was a section devoted to the captain of the Titanic. There are many accounts of where he was and what he was doing as the boat sank. All of them are heroic. These various and contradictory accounts speak to the human tendency to mythologize and/or canonize tragic figures.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed the museum not only for its fascinating history of the Titanic but for its larger contextual history of Belfast.

Titanic Museum, Belfast!

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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.