RMS Titanic ready to launch

On May 31, 1911, the RMS Titanic was launched at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland.  After continued outfitting, the ship was delivered to White Star Line on March 30, 1912.  She set sail for New York City on her maiden voyage on 10 April 10, 1912 with 2,223 passengers and crew.   Four days into the crossing, she struck an iceberg and sank at 2:20 on April 15, with the loss 1,517 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.   After years of not publicizing that the Titanic was built in Belfast, the memory of the ship is being used to attract visitors. A new tourist center is being built on the old  docklands, christened Titanic Quarter.

Belfast cheers 100th anniversary of Titanic launch

“As soon as you say ‘Titanic,’ most people think of the sinking,” said the Rev. Chris Bennett, a Protestant minister who officiated at Tuesday’s ceremony.

“But here in Belfast we’re trying to recapture that idea that the Titanic is something to be proud of. This fabulous, biggest man-made moving object in the world was built right here,” said Bennett, whose Church of Ireland parish holds open-air services each Sunday on the docks and is raising funds for a boat to serve as its full-time church.

At 12:13 p.m., the Belfast crowd was told to clap, shout and cheer for exactly 62 seconds. That’s the amount of time it took the Titanic’s 882-foot (269-meter) hull to slide from its slipway into the water for the first time. Boats in the harbor blew their horns as a single flare was fired into the sky.