Ireland: Up ship creek with a Paddy

Murals in Shankill Rd hark back to times long ago. Photo / Graham Reid

For many decades, out of some kind of misplaced shame, many simply didn't want to talk about it. In Belfast's shipyards the name of the vessel once so proudly built there - but which sank in 1912 to become the world's most famous shipping disaster - simply went unspoken.

Even today, a century after the Titanic was being constructed and although there are over 300 Titanic museums around the world, there isn't one here where the famous White Star Liners - the Olympic, Titanic and Britannic - were built.

The most common saying about the Titanic in Belfast is this, first told to me by a cab driver named Billy, then repeated by our Titanic tour commentator, Allan, as we sailed along the River Lagan: "We built the unsinkable ship. Well, it was unsinkable when it left Belfast, but it had an English captain so it wasn't our fault."

Funny yes, but with more than a ring of truth about it. The Titanic's captain Edward J. Smith had been involved in collisions and incidents on the Olympic before taking over the helm of the Titanic and some said he was jinxed.

He wasn't, of course. As a pub wag on North St pointed out, the Titanic enjoyed four days of carefree sailing on the Atlantic before that night in April 1912 when it collided with an iceberg.

"Maybe we should blame the Norwegians," says Allan. "They built the iceberg."

Although there is currently no Titanic museum in Belfast - or indeed a maritime museum to acknowledge the 3000 other vessels built here - the city has long since come to terms with the notoriety of the great "unsinkable" ship. In fact, after those decades of denial by silence, Belfast is celebrating the Titanic and the city's maritime history with an annual festival in April.

There are also walking tours of the Titanic Dock and through the Edwardian pump house (which has a café and visitors' centre with audio-visual displays and works by leading Irish artists).

The Titanic Times - a thin broadsheet of anecdotes and photographs - says in its April editorial: "Belfast doesn't cower in the shadow of Titanic's untimely doom. Belfast basks in the glow of her everlasting accomplishment."

Those four days of carefree sailing, I suppose.

But the way to see the former shipyard area along the River Lagan is by boat, and so one afternoon I, along with only half a dozen others, took the Titanic Boat Tour from Donegall Quay for an information-packed and thoroughly enjoyable hour in which nothing happened and there was almost nothing to see.