Presentation at Belfast’s Jewish Community Centre.
Lagan Legacy launches new Club in the Jewish Community Centre
We are dleighted to announce that Lagan Legacy's Charlie Warmington was the first speaker at a new club for older people in Belfast's Jewish Community Centre. This is the introduction Mr Warmington made:
A grand and luxurious Ocean Cruise- Liner was once passing a small island in the Pacific on which a single palm tree was growing. But the liner’s passengers also noticed a half naked man with a very long beard hysterically gesticulating from the island’s sandy shore. He was frantically jumping up and down, shouting towards the ship, and desperately waving his arms in the air. "Who is he?" a passenger asked the vessel’s captain. The liner’s skipper replied, "I've no idea at all. Every year when we sail past here that guy always goes nuts."Similarly in Belfast – every year, around April time, Belfast goes a bit nuts - about the Titanic. The city’s most famous icon gets a week of pampering, and then the reminiscences are switched off for another twelve months. This year’s Festival has just ended. For a week Titanis is just about all that the city, and the rest of Northern Ireland remembers about out unique maritime heritage. Then everything goes quiet.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 being the world’s biggest manmade moving object, built in a city that regularly surpassed all the nautical records, into a star eclipsing everything that followed in her long wake from the Lagan. Titanic has become a ‘weapon of mass distraction’ and her wake in several senses of the word, still continues.Once upon a time there was a very experienced old sea captain. This elderly master mariner had a glowing record of safely navigating merchant ships all over the world. He was always greatly admired by his crew and fellow officers. However, he had a curious habit which no one understood. Every morning he went through a strange ritual. He would sit in his cabin and open a small safe. In the safe he kept his valuables, but there was also an envelope inside, containing a tattered piece of paper. Torn, frayed and cellotaped together.He would stare intensely at the paper for a minute, and then lock it back in the safe. After that, he would go about his daily duties. Was it a treasure map? Or a letter from a long lost love? Maybe it was his last will and testament. Everyone speculated about the contents of that strange envelope. One day, on duty, the old captain died. After the sadness of a burial at sea, the first mate led some of the crew into the captain’s quarters. He unlocked the safe, took out the envelope, opened it and... well, he was shocked, turned pale, and showed the paper to the others. Four words were written on the paper. Port Left, Starboard Right.Well, every day of the year the citizens of Belfast could write often more than four sea-going words on a piece of paper. Each word would be the name of a Belfast built ship, somewhere down the centuries, that was launched on that date. After the launch, the new vessel was berthed, to be fitted out and completed by the shipyard workers. So these dates are Belfast’s “berthdays”, berth with an “E”.To illustrate what Titanic has distracted us from - let’s look at today, 22nd April, down on the Lagan, down the years. It’s an awesome tally of nautical anniversaries.
On the 22nd April 1920 the Dorsetshire was launched on the Lagan, a 7,445 ton Cargo ship for the Bibby Steamship Company. She was an “N” Type standard ship intended for carrying iron ore. Dorsetshire had Belfast built sister called Somersetshire. The “N” Type were prefabricated vessels, production line manufacturing, which Belfast was good at. Both vessels were converted into troop carriers for WW1, and then into hospital ships for WW11. In January 43 Dorsetshire suffered a two-day constant air attack off Tobruk, survived, and later that year off Sicily was damaged in another attack.
Today in 1947 HMS Centaur was launched in Belfast. She was a 22,000 ton Hermes Class aircraft carrier. Like many of Belfast’s ships, she’s virtually forgotten in the city of her birth yet books have been written about this vessel. She had a magnificent naval, air and military history, operating mostly in the Mediterranean and Far East. A few of her highlights were Operation Damon during the crisis in Aden in 1955, when Sea Vixens from HMS Centaur launched strikes on rebellious tribesmen in the Radfan. Then in 1961 when President Kassam of Iraq was growling threateningly at Kuwait Centaur arrived, the third carrier to deploy, this time off Aden. President Kassem suddenly found new reasons to accept Kuwait's right of sovereignty. In the 1964 mutiny in Tanganyika Centaur arrived at Dar-es-Salaam, and a company of Royal Marines were landed by helicopter on a football field next to the barracks of the mutineers. The company assaulted the barracks with full force in a chaotic but swift attack, securing the entrance to the barracks. After a call for the mutinous soldiers to surrender failed, the company demolished the front of the guardroom, with a deftly placed shot from an anti-tank rocket launcher. The culmination of the decision proved successful, with a large number of distressed soldiers pouring out into the open. Later on, four Sea Vixens from Centaur provided cover for more Royal Marines who were now landing on an air strip. The operation was a success and the rest of the mutineers soon surrendered, with the main culprits being arrested. Many Tanganyikans were jubilant when the country was restored to a stable and peaceful environment. Belfast’s Centaur was their friend. After various other tasks as an army accommodation ship and a training vessel, in 1970 she was towed to Devonport where she would await her fate for a further two more years, when finally she was towed to Cairn Ryan and broken up, after her long and eventful career.
Today in 1943 HMS Rattler, a 1,053 ton Algerine Class Minesweeper was commissioned. Rattler was in Normandy for operation Neptune obeying her motto “Fight for the King.” On the 22nd August 1944 she was hit by a torpedo and sank stern first in 10 minutes. Her Commander and 19 men were lost. After several hours in the water the rest of her crew were picked up. 1954Elpenor Ship No: 1,477 7,757 ton cargo ship for the Ocean Steamship Company.