Yesterday we arrived in Belfast and began our visit with a tour of City Hall.  Belfast was once a very financially successful city because of its ship building industry, and as we learned on the tour, the most famous ship built in Belfast was the Titanic.  What really struck me on the tour yesterday was the narrative the city has created around the story of the Titanic.  This narrative has two parts: pride in building the ship and the tragedy of lives lost.  What is noticeably absent is the middle part, that is, the mistakes and oversights that went into the design and equipping of the ship and who was to blame.  In City Hall, they have a ballroom specifically dedicated to the Titanic with two larger than life portraits of the owners of the ship.  One might expect that they would be blamed in part for the great tragedy, but not in Belfast.

The creation of this narrative reminds me of the way we discuss the Civil War south of the Mason-Dixon.  We struggle to honor the dead while balancing the knowledge that the south was in the wrong and that they lost the war.  The narratives are different, but they both speak to the way people tell the stories of their place.  Outside of Belfast, people often focus on the mistakes that were made in crafting the ship, just like outside of southern America, people define confederate soldiers as pure villains.  Here in Belfast, however, the building of the ship is a great source of pride.  It was the largest man-made vessel ever designed.  It was beautiful with intricate wood-work and excellent craftsmanship throughout. They consistently honor the men who built it.  This is balanced by the tragedy of its sinking.  They also have erected memorials to those lost and to those who showed great bravery.  It important here that they create a story that glorifies the work and pays tribute to the dead.  They erase the embarrassment of the ship’s great failing.

We might expect that we will get the “real story” when we go to a place where an important event took place.  However, it seems that this may be the least likely place to get to the truth of the matter.  People here still have a very personal connection to the Titanic; perhaps an ancestor worked on the ship or helped build it.  Because of this the story is much more carefully crafted, the stream is diverted away from embarrassment or blame, than it is in the greater world.