Titanic - Weapon of Mass Distraction.
Lagan Legacy’s researcher, Charlie Warmington, opens the Titanic Talks with a poignant play on words - "Titanic,Weapon of Mass Distraction!"
TITANIC - WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION.
Lagan Legacy's Researcher Charlie Warmington.
The Titanic, I'm suggesting, was a ‘weapon of mass distraction'!
Why distraction?
Her celebrity status as the world's biggest ship; as a luxurious liner full of famous passengers; her sudden, premature and tragic demise; her subsequent and international intrigue -
all of these distractions - diversions - transmogrified Titanic from the world's biggest manmade moving object into a star eclipsing everything that followed in her long wake from the Lagan.
A wake in several senses of the word, that still continues.
Titanic was a nautical enigma.
She was everything that was great and glorious.
She was beyond the wildest dream of common man.
She was from another world, and while this world focussed on all the distractions, and continues to do so, only a few Lagan stalwarts ever trumpeted the Belfast brand that Titanic was stamped with, and that made her great - a brand that was on the greatness to come and the greatness that had gone before.
Apart from the huge intrigue that she left behind (and aside from the "normal" run of history and its hiccoughs) Titanic was followed by "business as usual" rather than "business most extraordinarily spectacular"!
The White Star Liner had become a four-funnelled icon that hogged and robbed the headlines for nearly a century. For that, and for other more recent local reasons, the city has "grown accustomed to her voice!" and to her voice only.
Today, during the first moments of the sixth Titanic Made In Belfast Festival, commemorating her 95 years of ongoing nautical nostalgia, I want to ignore the diversions, to listen for a while to the other voices.
This is a very special Festival - in scale, in approach, with its unique extras - the Nomadic, the progressing Titanic Quarter plans, Lagan Legacy's barge the Confiance - and being the 95th Titanic commemoration - the centenary is fast approaching - there's much to see and many more authoritative people than me to listen to - so for a few minutes more I want to humbly offer a different way of looking and listening.
I'll not be ignoring Titanic; rather, I'll be regarding her from a different viewpoint. Calling her "a weapon of mass distraction" is part of the ploy - I want to approach the subject uncompromisingly, "heritage with attitude"!
As a journalist all my working life I once had the privilege of working on a documentary with the stepson of another of Belfast's internationally acclaimed icon's - literary genius, Christian apologist, man of faith, academic, pipe smoking pint drinking C.S.Lewis, who lived with our Lough framed in his bedroom window, and in his mind's eye.
His stepson Douglas Gresham was the boy child of Joy Gresham whom Lewis married late in life - and who died of cancer - a very harrowing, if famously helpful story which C.S. penned so eloquently in that wonderful book "The problem of Pain". A titanic tome if ever there was one.
Lewis, by the way, was well soaked in his homeland's maritime heritage. "The sound of a steamer's horn at night still conjures up my whole boyhood," he wrote in "The Problem of pain" adding "My memory is stored with ships side images to a degree unusual for such an untravelled man."
He used ships, and analogies of ships, constantly throughout his work, and to the best of my knowledge, never mentioned Titanic.
Even to describe the two most important things in his life, his faith and his marriage, he turned to ships. "It is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us," he wrote, again in the Problem of Pain.
And when his beloved Joy Gresham passed away- "Marriage is as one ship, which must chug along on a single engine after the death of one's spouse," he penned in "A Grief Observed."
For our documentary we asked his stepson Douglas Gresham the obvious question about his stepfather - what was it like to live in the shadow of a huge character like C.S.Lewis?
Gresham replied with an answer I still consider to be one of my most memorable moments of reporting - "I didn't live in his shadow," he siad, "I basked in his glow!"
This, I suggest, is what we should be doing with Titanic. Gresham wrote a biography about C.S., and got on with his own, very creative life, and has helped many thousands of authors and artists - and me - to face the reality of their professions, of work, and faith.
This is the kind of attitude we need for Titanic.
Some may regard such this approach as tactless or tasteless or both. Isn't ‘heritage with attitude' what has postponed progress here for the past three decades, and been a problem worldwide throughout history, some might ask? The Spanish Armada had attitude - yes - but there's method in Armadas - excuse the pun - and it's that method that I'm scrutinising.
Others might remark that the Titanic was a terrible tragedy, and it's the dead that should be commemorated. I'm not ruling out this important aspect of our history, but "Heritage with attitude" is much more than all of these inherent debates. It's actually a bit like peace - and Benjamin Frankin said "There never was a good war, or a bad peace"! The best way to shun peace is to do nothing.
No. Heritage with attitude is a positive necessity - it is hard work, it's a new way of thinking - it's an attempt to save our actual history - our real history which included the Titanic, yes, but there was so much more than her- the people who built the other ships, an armada of them, and our memories of those people, their diaries and notes and quotes and anecdotes.
The tools and artefacts - and just as important as the voices that can still tell us about their unique and irreplaceable craftsmanship are the places where they worked, aside our very own and very special River Lagan.
All this needs heritage with attitude; it needs teeth. Otherwise we're left with empty spaces along the Lagan, selling little more than plastic Titanic toys to tourists.
The gaps in Belfast's industrial heritage are everywhere. Darwin's origin of the species attempts to trace the evolution of mankind. The evolution of Belfast could well be called "The Origin of the Spaces"!
We need to bite on our heritage with teeth before it's too late! We're in danger of losing it.
Titanic toys and replica reproductions have their place, but on their own they are false teeth; merely gums! Curiously, you can buy a mass produced plastic Titanic gumball machine in the States for $600. And this is only one of millions of examples of how the Titanic, through no fault of her own, has become a weapon of mass distraction.
What is the point of a multi million-dollar Hollywood blockbuster film starring Kate Winslett, when wee Katie Smith from East Belfast thinks Titanic was built in Liverpool, and can't name one other vessel built on the River Lagan?
This is what Titanic has distracted us from. We've followed a star all the way to Bethlehem, and then kept looking at it - the star rather than the saviour - until we got cross eyed.
I'm suggesting that ships plural are our heritage, our history, our saviour.
If Titanic hadn't happened, Belfast would still have been one of the mightiest maritime cities in the world. Indeed, with great respect - the city might have become an even bigger nautical name. But there's far too many Katie's living here, and around the world.
There are some excellent books and publications about Belfast's inimitable nautical past, by local writers and authors from further afield. We have a host of experts and academics keeping our history alive. We have wonderful museums. There are authoritative documentaries, dramas, radio, film and television too. Our local media, particularly the Newsletter and BBC radio, has done much to raise the profile of our maritime heritage, but the greatest story never told is the River Lagan, once awash with every available superlative, yet it doesn't seem to have sunk in - except for Titanic!
There used to be Seven Wonders of the World - nowadays there are more - in fact there are four main categories of seven each - totalling twenty-eight - wonders of the ancient world, the natural world, the 20th Century, and the alternative wonders of the world.
I attained a substantial layer of sweat on my brow speculating about ‘an alternative wonder' and what exactly fits the definition, opened my third floor office window to cool my brain, and knocked my window box into the car park below.
An alternative wonder materialized.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon - the falling window boxes of Belfast - co-incidental, but funny things happen when you're working with Titanic!
However, staying with the original seven wonders, the greatest and best known of them all, the most photographed, written about, the ones with the most intrigue - are the pyramids; the last resting places of the Pharaohs.
And without any doubt the best-known Pharaoh is Tutankhamen - but he didn't have a pyramid. Not even co-ownership or rented - nothing changes!
Just a tomb!
And we all have pictures held in our minds of Tutankhamen's tomb - the mummified bodies, the wall paintings, and details of his life written there upon - and what detail - for goodness sake, we even know that he had big front teeth and a cleft palate!
His tomb is the best preserved in the world, the associated artefacts are the most exhibited internationally - like the Titanic, he's an icon!
And there's music and songs about him too.
The American comedian and songwriter Steve Martin has written a famous whimsical ditty about him - "King Tut"!
He was even the namesake of Batman's arch-enemy in the 1960's Batman television series.
How famous can you get!??
Yet in 1907, nearly twenty years before Howard Carter found Tut's tomb in the Valley of Kings, another archaeologist, who had just concluded a dig in the area, and camped on top of Tutankhamen's grave, and packed up and gone home, wrote - " I fear that the valley of Kings is now exhausted."!
A greatest story not told because of attitude - due to distractions - deviations and excavations - he'd other digs to do!
Co-incidentally, like the Seven Wonders of the World there's another "top list" - somewhat less edifying - this one's for graffiti.
The world's cleverest graffiti - and top of the list -"Tutankhamen has changed his mind. He wants to be buried at sea"!!!!
Imagine if that had happened, he'd never have been heard of again.
Correction - we might have heard about nothing else - like a big Belfast built ship with four funnels!
I think I've made a point - let's not camp on top of a tomb - let's not get too distracted- let's have heritage with teeth - else it'll be lost. And what will be lost?
Concurrent with Harland and Wolff being the biggest shipbuilder in the world, the city's other yard Workman Clarke was the second biggest, and down the centuries there were another dozen.
There's a list of ships owned by Belfast merchants dated 1663, including vessels of up to 50 tons.
After which came William Ritchie's yard with his 300 ton Hibernian launched in 1792.
Which expanded into Ritchie and McClaine.
Then came Coates and Young, Charles Connell and Sons, Kirwan and McCune, Thompson and Kirwan and more to boot.
Give or take a few minor qualifications, down the years Belfast also boasted some of world's greatest linen mills, soap factories, rope works and thread works.
Her potteries, glassworks, gasworks, tea factories, cigarette producers and brickworks were national if not international leaders.
All nurtured by Belfast folk and their river.
The city's vast vaulted underground sewage system was revolutionary, her huge industrial and maritime ventilation systems were second to none, similarly her aircraft, trains, bridges, oil rigs and much more; all curiously underplayed.
I suggest one reason might be because of a magnificent but sad single ship - currently underneath the Atlantic.
One thing is for sure - Titanic is well known around the world - the rest of our story isn't!
The rest is hardly known here!
"The Greatest Story Never Told" is our collective heritage - the thousands of other ships; many tens of millions of tons of innovative Lagan legacy laid beside, launched upon, and travelled from, Belfast - to make history everywhere!
Just one example of the Lagan's floating ‘history makers exported' was Coates and Young's little ship the Mullogh.
The transition from wooden ships to iron, and from sailing ships to steam, was a confusing period in maritime history when compromise and uncertainty resulted in sailboats with funnels.
The same formula today would give rise to cars pulled by horses!
Now there's an idea for Conservative Party leader David Cameron - having so dismally failed with his bicycle followed by a chauffer driven car!
The dawn the Mullogh was overloaded with the old and the new- all happening simultaneously - it was the breakfast time of change - the nautical equivalent of inventing pop tarts, muesli, electric toasters and sliced bread all at once!
Priorities got muddled and mistakes were made!
Riverboats successfully utilized steam driven paddle wheels that worked well on calm water, but on rough seas, when the ship rolled, one paddle dug into the water; the other swung clear of the surface and did convincing impersonations of a windmill.
These beleaguered paddleboats progressed like intoxicated crabs!
So old fashioned fore and aft sails were re-introduced using the wind to balance the boat and counter the conundrum.
Then a breakthrough - the "screw propeller". When it evolved it stayed underwater...... and it was a while before someone discovered that the rudder worked better behind the vessel rather than in front!
Then, in 1855, after six years experimenting, designer Robert Griffiths patented the modern propeller.
The Scientific American reviewed Mr Griffiths' invention, almost unintelligibly, as "most improved because its blades do not conform to the lines of a true screw, but it is an oblique paddle."
Presumably the Jumblies read this review, cancelled their Mediterranean cruise, and sensibly booked their legendary fortnight in a sieve!
Meanwhile, and prior to Harland and Wolff, a company called Coates and Young had been building small iron ships on the Lagan since 1838. During their early years iron hulled screw driven steam ships were regarded as a somewhat radical approach to maritime design; Coates and Young compromised with the critics!
In 1855 they launched one of these newfangled metal ships from their slipway close to the riverside site currently occupied by the Tennants textile factory.
She was the Mullogh that sported her funnel and sails.
She sailed first to Australia, then New Zealand, and faced many challenges in a variety of guises during her seventy-year lifespan.
Like many Lagan vessels, her life story reads like a best seller.
Her trip to Australia was a hazardous affair. The Mullogh was really only a "ketch" - a small sailing boat with two masts and of course an enigmatic funnel.
She was 60 feet long (approximately the same as a bendy bus) and weighed 70 tons (that's three bendy buses!).
She had a 15-horsepower steam engine (a bendy bus has 300 horse power, not steam; but if David Cameron gets elected you never know!) and had space for sixty tons of cargo and five crew.
(Now there's some bendy bus!)
When the Mullogh first arrived, miraculously, in Australia she was used as a coastal trader, working out of the Manning River, 350 miles north of Sydney. In 1859 she was purchased by a Christchurch merchant company for £1,600 and put in the command of a Captain Lovett.
The Captain was conservative with a small "c" - which doesn't seem to have made much difference because he immediately disconnected her funnel and propeller, stowed them in her hold, hoisted the sails, and embarked on a twenty-two day sailing trip from Sydney to Lyttleton with a cargo of bricks in the hold.
And of course, a funnel and a propeller!
The Belfast built ketch was far ahead of her time!
The tiny vessel also carried passengers on this trip, including a Mr Edward Green, the telegraph engineer in charge of constructing New Zealand's first long distance telegraph line.
1863 brought mixed blessings to the Mullogh.
She bravely rescued the crew from a holed cargo ship and delivered New Zealand's first ever steam train to its terminus; the fledgling country's first railway system.
The ensuing strain on Mullogh's boilers blew a gasket, which required major repairs.
1865 brought her good news and bad.
The bad news was that she ran aground on rocks off a sandy cove called Sumner beach. The good news was that her cargo consisted solely of barrels of whiskey.
Beachcombing in the area became the most popular pastime!
"We're all going on a - Sumner Holiday"!
The Mullogh's fate was less pleasant; she was towed from the rocks and promptly sank; a project presumably planned by committee!
Two months later, salvaged and repaired, she was back in business and served as a tender, tug, gold miners' supply ship, coaster and fishing boat until 1923 when she was stripped and beached on Quail Island, New Zealand, where she lies today with her rusted boiler still in place. And can still be seen, and recognised as a ship. Lagan vessels lasted, and became hugely popular; Belfast's innovative little Mullogh was one small ‘ketch' for man, one giant fleet for mankind.
Like much of the Lagan's legacy she's resting in pieces, awaiting decisions. The solution is simple; attitude!
Some flexible joined up thinking; like a bendy bus!
The Mullough, just one of up to a hundred million tons of ships.
Today's Belfast is a city striding proudly into an exciting new era after suffering thirty vacuous years of sadness and tragedy. Humble heroes, many of whom may never be acknowledged, have worked relentlessly to reconstruct life in our unique and very special place; very special because of its characters and characteristics - its people, places, past and present.
I suggest that some of the most special of all were, and are, the shipyard workers, their related tradesmen, craftsmen, sea farers and management. Theirs' was a miracle rarely worked, if ever, on any river in the world.
And who remembers them? The top owners and managers too seem virtually unknown in the city they as good as built!
Yes - there are memorials and statues and paintings - but they haven't sunk in!
Yet everyone knows the name of the Titanic.
I took to the streets of Belfast a couple of days ago on behalf of today's talk.
We journalists call this task "Vox pops".
It used to be a tradition for a trainee ‘cub' reporter to hit the streets to learn their trade, and three decades ago, as such a cub, my confrontations with the public were never very comforting.
At the height (or depth) of the troubles, and asking people how they viewed bigotry, one lady smiled at me and suggested that she was all for it; it would be great, she said, having half a dozen husbands!
Questioning a pensioner about our standard of driving - we were on a footpath alongside a busy Great Victoria Street at rush hour - he gripped my arm, navigated me directly into several lanes of impatient traffic, all the time advising me that Belfast drivers were excellent.
A bus screeched to a halt several inches from me and my inadvertently discarded notebook.
On the subject of so called ‘joy riding' a colleague once ventured into West Belfast to gather local views, and had his car stolen while he was interviewing passers by.
Forgetting these previous escapades, a few days ago I decided to vox pop our shoppers asking if they knew the names of our more renowned shipbuilders; my opening question to people on the street was "Who owns/owned Belfast's most famous shipyard?" Unsurprisingly, all but one got the surnames right and the lady who didn't was from Dublin.
On being faced with the date that the yard started a few managed ‘here and there' during the 1800s, and I terminated that question with the man who answered 1690. Though as I've said earlier, a list of Lagan built ships owned by Belfast merchants goes back to 1663.
On the matter of Harland and Wolff building anything else but ships some thought maybe they built other things, several rightly mentioned oil rigs and floating docks, two were bang on with bridges, and I can't confirm the plausibility of paintbrushes being constructed on Queen's Island though I wouldn't be surprised!
On being asked the full names of Messrs Harland and Wolff there were a smattering of Samuels, William, Billy and intriguingly "One of them was Eastern European, wasn't he?" but no one got Edward James Harland and the German Gustav Wilhelm Wolff.
With regard to there ever being any other shipyards on the Lagan it emerged that few passers by really knew, except a 60 year old male health worker who rightly said "There's a Clarke rattling about in my head!" ; presumably Workman Clarke.
A professional lady in her fifties knew Workman Clarke's misnomer - "The wee yard" - as I've said, it was very big indeed - and apparently there was once a shipyard in Lisburn. Not too far off the mark - they once built a lot of barges there.
The answers to the existence of any other heavy industries were healthily forthcoming with linen topping the poll, textiles next; rope and tobacco were popular. One answer, "Brothels" I took to be incorrectly defined under the "heavy industry" terminology unless a red ‘light' meant the opposite!
A very sad minority - zero - knew any other names of people connected to shipbuilding. One 55 year old self employed East Belfast man suggested Leonardo DiCaprio, and another joker in the pack, when I reminded him of Thomas Andrews, replied "Of course, and his liver salts!"
Speculation on the actual number of shipyard workers fared better, with over three quarters of the poll hitting relatively close to home, or to within a few tens of thousands of the peak of forty thousand men.
When I asked my previous joker "Any women?" he answered "Not at the moment, but I never lose hope!"
Most guessed that upholstery departments, drawing offices and secretarial positions would have been inhabited by the female of the species, and I wasn't sure what the Dublin lady was angling at when she suggested there were lots of ladies working as "rivet catchers"!
At the end of my straw poll I asked the slightly irreverent question - "Who would you choose to run a shipyard today?" My pollsters clutched at short straws blowing in the wind, and Bono and Bob Geldoff featured noticeably.
Retrospectively, not a bad choice; Belfast was certainly a number one in her day!
The top twenty is a useful link at this stage.
Remember the Supremes; Diana Ross and the Supremes?? Can any one name the other two? This is where Titanic, Weapon of Mass Distraction comes into her own. Because there were two others - as big, as innovative, as well built, as supreme - and with amazing stories to tell - but very few people here, and only the real fanatics around the world - can tell you anything about the other two Olympic Class Liners - the Olympic herself, launched before the Titanic, and the Britannic, launched after the Titanic. And each was a big story.
Olympic was originally a bigger story than Titanic, preceding her sister as the biggest man made moving object in the world. Olympic first made her name at sea in 1914 when she was ordered to evacuate the crew of a British Battleship Audacious which had struck a mine. In 1915 the SS Olympic returned to Harland & Wolff to prepare for war. As a troop carrier she successfully ferried many thousands of soldiers to and from their duties, saving many others from stricken vessels on the way.
In 1918, after careful strategic planning by her skipper, the Olympic rammed the German U boat U103 and sank her. When the war ended British troops were still posted all over the world and Olympic continued to make the round trips to bring troops home. By 1920 she was refitted as a transatlantic Liner and in June a celebration party was held on board on to mark the return of the "Old Reliable". She was on her way to New York on 26th June 1920.
Olympic proved to be more popular than ever. Passengers enjoyed her swimming pools and Turkish baths, and Charlie Chaplin loved the card games in her smoking room.
In 1933 the Olympic smashed into the Nantucket Lightship totally destroying it.
After almost one quarter of a century in service she was auctioned off. There were 4,456 lots.
The general public could not view the items but only read descriptions in a catalogue - which cost two shillings and six pence.
The third Supreme sister, the Britannic was launched in 1914 but on the outbreak of war was converted into a hospital ship with over 3,000 beds. After hugely successful and life saving voyages, in 1916 she ran into a German laid mine field (though some speculate torpedoes) and was racked by an enormous explosion. A small number died in the ensuing mayhem and survivors were picked up by escorting destroyers. At almost 50,000 tons she was the largest British Merchant Service war loss.
And that's just three supreme Lagan Built sisters, and the little Mullogh.
I've included the Weapon of Mass Distraction in the foursome, and I've called her that, to put her in context of the many other supreme ships.
Forgive me please, if I've in any way sounded as if I've belittled the biggest ship - in every sense - that was launched on the Lagan.
The Titanic is why we're here today.
We're not living in her shadow, we're basking in her glow - and there are enough Lagan lights to shine on every vessel and on every man, woman and child, past present and future, that helped or will help make the greatest story never told.
We've had our diversions.
We've just moved on from thirty years of distractions.
The Titanic, and virtually everything that was launched on the Lagan, was a miracle that only Belfast could perform.
Let's sail on to the centenary, to 2012, and far beyond.
Thankyou.