This Belfast attraction is not just a museum — it's an experience

LAST Saturday night-Sunday morning was the 106th anniversary of the sinking of the most famous ship in history — the Titanic. She went down in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic on April 14-15, 1912 and in her dying a thousand legends were born.

In our feature on these pages last week Jacqueline Hogge wrote about Andy Keane from Athenry, and how his family have never forgotten his loss. They recall the poignant details of his baggage: his county hurling medal, his beloved melodeon, and a dozen hurleys with which to start a club in his new home in the USA.
This week we pull back from the story of one unlucky man to focus on the bigger picture of a most unlucky ship. The vessel that was proclaimed unsinkable was the victim of a freak accident that one authority has said “never happened before or since in recorded maritime history”.
When the Titanic glided down the slipway at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast on May 31, 1911, she was the largest moving object ever constructed by humans.
Most of the stories about her concentrate on her final hours, but the Titanic story is not just about a ship that sank on her maiden voyage: it is the history of a city, of tens of thousands of workers, of an industry that grew from nothing.
That history is brought to life in the most absorbing way in Titanic Belfast, a building and a concept for which the word museum is too limiting by far.

Read more in this week's edition of The Tuam Herald