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The peaceful period following the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 up to the start of WW1 in 1914 was a time of great advances in social and artistic movements in Europe, centralised in France, and became known as the Belle Époque.

At the same time there were shifting collaborations between nations where Britain, Austria and Prussia were allied against Napoleonic France. The unification of Italy and Germany brought other pressures with the arrangement between France and Russia seen by Germany as a particular threat which they met by re-arming with naval power. This brought them into direct competition with Britain who had the largest navy in history and the UK was also the most successful ship builders in the world.

By the 1890s Britain was losing its global predominance to both Germany and the USA. To maintain influence in the world the use of soft power was recognised as a replacement for gun boat diplomacy. One way was to have the most impressive, biggest and most luxurious ocean-going liners to attract the most wealthy and influential people in the world. Who better to build such leviathans but the most famous ship builders in the world, Harland & Wolff of Belfast.

This background was explained by speaker Dr Stephen Goss, himself an Ulsterman whose great grandfather was a painter on the RMS Titanic in this famous shipyard.

Belfast had boomed from the success of ship building with “Belfast Built” its signature and had become world leaders in ship construction, support services and finance. It was the only place to build three transatlantic liners for the White Star Line whose names are engraved in the annals of history, the Olympic, Titanic and Britannic.

At 46,000 tons the Titanic was the largest ship in the world and was fitted out to the most luxurious level. The staterooms were designed to exceed the expectations of the great and good while the second-class cabins on the Titanic were more than a match for first class on other liners. Its safety measures considerably exceeded the maritime regulations of the day. And to further pander to the wealthy clientele the Marconi Company was employed to relay ship to shore messages via the latest Morse Code signalling system.

During these years the increasing industrial and commercial activity in Belfast meant that there was extensive commercial traffic across the North Channel to Scotland and England as supplies were required from British manufacturers.

The pressure for Irish independence in the 1920s increasingly led to conflicts and to the three-year Irish war of independence between the forces of the Irish Republic – the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the British Crown forces. This was a major concern to the business community in Ulster where 8,000 mostly Catholic workers had been driven out of the Belfast shipyards sparking sectarian violence in the city. There had been a long held fear an independent Catholic Dublin would negatively influence commercial matters between Belfast and Britain. The shipyards had become a Protestant closed shop and became afraid for the future of ship building and supporting industries that had brought so much prosperity throughout Ulster. The people in Belfast felt they had to protect their interests and in 1913 they had formed the Ulster Volunteer Force with 100,000 members. During WW1 they became the 36th (Ulster) Division and post war became the Ulster Special Constabulary when Northern Ireland was created in 1921.

When Home Rule was granted for Ireland it renamed itself the Irish Free State except the six counties of Ulster remained part of the United Kingdom, but the foundations were laid for generations of problems that in modern times became known as ‘The Troubles’.

The sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage is well known but the discovery of the wreck is far from straight forward as the Marconi operator that fateful night gave incorrect information that placed the stricken ship a few miles from its actual position.

Over the years there had been several attempts to find the wreck, including one by oceanographer Robert Ballard. His ship contained the latest sonar and submersible technology, and he approached the US navy seeking support. While an agreement was reached to finance the search for the Titanic there was another reason for their support which was as cover for a top-secret mission. In the 1960s the US navy had lost two nuclear submarines in the North Atlantic Ocean in the area that supposedly contained the wreck of the Titanic, and they did not want the Russians to be aware of this search or its result.

The two submarines were located but that only left twelve days of the contract to find the Titanic and on 1^st September 1985 a boiler was discovered in a debris field that led to the wreck. The survivors were wrong, and the Titanic had broken its back when descending below the waves. The rest, as they say, is history, culminating in June 2023 of the implosion of the observation submersible, Titan, with the loss of five lives.

And the future of Harland & Wolff remains uncertain as on 16^th September 2024 it was reported the company entered administration for the second time in five years. The company is expected to continue operations normally while its non-core operations wind down.