BELFAST’S TITANIC LEGACY

“We have had a wonderful passage up to now. There has been no tempest. It is very nice weather but awfully windy and cold.” Esther Hart, from Ilford, Essex, penned a letter to her mother from the Titanic on Sunday, April 14, 1912, just hours before the liner struck an iceberg and sank to a watery grave. Esther and her daughter Eva escaped the disaster in a lifeboat, but there was no room for Esther’s husband Benjamin, who went down with the ship.

Titanic Belfast, the city’s landmark attraction, is full of such heartbreaking stories. The location of the building itself, which was constructed ten years ago to commemorate the centenary of the sinking, immediately captures the  imagination: it stands alongside the slipways where the was built, and towers above the River, its four corners jutting out to echo the hulls of ships.