NARRATOR: When the RMS Titanic
went down on the 15th of April, 1912 claiming over 1,500 lives,
it took with it the pride and the hope of an entire city. What disappeared in
just 180 minutes, had taken the people of Belfast
millions of man-hours to build. Before construction
could begin, they had to carve a vast new dock
from the city's marshland. They'd shape acres of steel to
form a hull that they believed was unbreakable. They'd install two
engines, each the size of a two-story building,
to power the Titanic across the Atlantic. And the finest
craftsmen had labored to create an interior that
would rival the grandest hotels on land. Today the place from which
the great ship was launched is derelict and deserted,
but our investigators have come here to build a
picture of how it looked in its heyday. Home to an army of dedicated
workers, the largest shipyard in the world, we
will find traces of the massive structures
that stood here and the vast resources
that were deployed. We will discover the harsh
conditions in which the men lived and worked. We'll reveal evidence
of skill, determination, and extraordinary ambition. It ended in catastrophe,
but what happened here was incredible. We will reconstruct the world
of the men who set out to build the biggest ship in history. This is "The Lost
World of the Titanic." [music playing] The Titanic was built here, in
the Harland and Wolff Dock Yard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. At the time, Belfast was one of
the busiest ports in the world, trading goods from all
over the British Empire. But the coastline of Belfast
hasn't always looked like this. At one time, the
city didn't even have a natural harbor
big enough to accommodate a ship like the Titanic. Our investigators, marine
engineer Rupert Keyser, and historian
Jennifer Regan, have come to find out why and
how this land was turned from a muddy swamp into the
world's largest, busiest port. They want to build a
picture of the world that created the Titanic. Jennifer Regan from
Georgetown University is an expert in early
20th century history. As a social historian, she is
interested in investigating the people, the city,
and the shipyard that built the Titanic. Jennifer begins here, in the
now derelict headquarters of Harland and Wolff, the
company that built the ship. We all know that the
sinking of the Titanic was probably the greatest
Maritime disaster of all history, but I'm
interested in a different story about the Titanic, the lost
world behind the Titanic. I've come to learn about
the shipyards, the workers. And I want to know, first,
where did the idea come from? Why did Harland and
Wolff, here in Belfast, decide to build the largest
ship that man had ever seen? NARRATOR: The 1900s were a time
of innovation and invention, both on the land and on the sea. A new generation of
steamships began a revolution in global travel. A company called the Cunard
Line, led the field with two super-fast vessels, the
Mauritania and the Lusitania. and Wolff's chairman,
William Pirrie, was determined to
challenge the supremacy. He planned the construction
of three vast new liners. One of them would be
called the Titanic. These ships were to be
built by hand, without any of the modern tools and
technology that we have today. And as an expert in
marine engineering, Rupert Keyser is
fascinated by the question of how it was done. On the 31st of May, 1911,
the Royal Mail Ship Titanic was launched from this slipway. It wasn't her technology
that really set her apart, it was her immense scale. Now what I'm interested
in finding out is, what were the feats of
engineering and the challenges that had to be overcome in
order to create the largest ship in the world? NARRATOR: The scale of
William Perry's ambition becomes clear when we look at
the blueprints for the Titanic. His ship would be 880 feet long,
equivalent to six Boeing 737s, laid end to end. The Titanic could accommodate
three and a half thousand people. There would be nine
decks, and fully laden, she would weigh 67,000 tons. She would be the heaviest,
tallest ship afloat. Five years before
she first sailed, the design process began
here, in the Harland and Wolff drawing office. In a store room, Jennifer
discovers, hidden away, the original plans for the ship. JENNIFER REGAN:
What I'm looking at are these plans, which date
from the exact same time period as the Titanic. And they're beautiful. They're hand drawn. And this is not actual paper. It's actually linen. And what I realized is
that every single detail on the Titanic was
drawn up in this room. From the decks to
the doorknobs, it would have been decided here. And this huge room
would have been full of people working away-- draftsmen and architects. NARRATOR: A small
army of designers was mobilized to work here. Jennifer meets Una Riley from
the Belfast Titanic Society, to discover how
it all came about. JENNIFER REGAN: Una, looking
at this model of the ship, how did this happen? Why did they decide to
build a ship on this scale? So big? It's basically all down
to one man, William Perry. He was Chairman of Harland
and Wolff at that time. He was very keen
to promote Belfast and to get work into
Belfast and the shipyard. And at that time,
the modern ship was a Cunard, the Lusitania
and the Mauritania. And they were built to
race across the Atlantic to save time. Now Perry decided, no, I'm not
going to go for that market. The Americas are
opening up, there's immigrants want to go there. I'm going to build the
biggest, most luxurious ships in the world to attract
the millionaires, and we're going to fill the
other spaces with immigrants. NARRATOR: So Perry's idea was
that the Titanic would make money not only from the rich,
but also from third class passengers, who would treat
the journey to America as the beginning of a new life. UNA RILEY: Most of the
space was given over to the first and second
class, but most of the people were actually down in the bowels
of the ship in third class. NARRATOR: This was to be the
most prestigious shipbuilding project in history, completed
in the world's largest shipyard. The creation of that shipyard
was a feat in itself. From just a small 17th century
town on the River Lagan, Belfast grew. The landscape
changed dramatically. To discover how,
Rupert Keyser has come to meet local
historian, Steven Cameron. Can you explain to us what
this area would have looked like about 300 years ago? STEVEN CAMERON: Yeah, really,
the way the river flowed down, this whole area would have
been mudflats at the time. The river meandered very badly. It was a major
problem for Belfast. Ships had to discharge cargoes
outside, really, the confines of the river, because it was so
narrow and so shallow, as well. So the Belfast
Ballast Board decided they would try and straighten
the Lagan and especially the bit just behind us here. NARRATOR: What the port
authorities proposed was a mammoth undertaking. Rupert wants to find out exactly
how they planned to transform acres of mudflats into
a thriving deep harbour. He goes to visit Jonathan
King, historian of the Belfast Harbour Commissioners. The Shipbuilding House
started in Belfast in the 1790s. NARRATOR: Jonathan is able to
show Rupert the original plans for the Harbor's development. JONATHAN KING: It's
hard to imagine, but the port
actually starts here. And River Farset used to flow
down Belfast's High Street, into the River Lagan. And that's where the first
wharf is built, back in 1613. But back then, none
of this land existed. So all this area here was
like mudflats at low tides. JONATHAN KING: All
mudflats, all sand banks. And not much use
to man nor beast. NARRATOR: Using Jonathan's
map as a starting point, we can see just how drastically
the shape of the coast was altered. The harbor authorities cut a
straight channel from the town to the sea. The mud and materials they
took from the dredging were used to create
all of this land. The Titanic would be built
on an artificial island, called Queens Island. It is the size of
20 football fields. RUPERT KEYSER: What I
find particularly amazing, and I think what a lot
of people, to this day, find staggering, is that in
the middle of the 19th century, how on earth could you have
created such a huge area of industrial land without
the use of the big machines that we have today? Yeah, so it was
a huge undertaking. You have to imagine men
with spades in the mud and the silt digging
this out physically. It was back-breaking,
dirty, hard work, but it was a wonderful benefit,
because it gave Belfast the land and the space it needed
to become the shipbuilders to the world. NARRATOR: By 1909, Belfast
City Harbour and Dockyard was a vast site. The workers believed
that their shipyard was the best in the world, and they
were ready to begin building the Titanic. the ship's construction, o a vast deep harbor had been
created here to accommodate large ocean going vessels. But since nothing on
the scale of the Titanic had ever been attempted, the
next stage before the ship building could even start,
was to create a yard capable of handling the job. A gigantic steel
frame, called a gantry, would be needed to house
the hull as it grew. It would have to be the
biggest of its kind. Historian Jennifer
Regan has come to see what's left of it
with Una Riley of the Belfast Titanic Society. JENNIFER REGAN: So Una,
we've left Harland and Wolff Headquarters, and that's
where the idea happened. And that's where
the plans are drawn. And then this is where the
construction happens, right? Where are we? We're actually
standing on the slipway where the Titanic was built. She
was actually built in that area there. NARRATOR: The gantry
that surrounded her was over 800 feet long and
twice the height of the Lincoln Memorial. Today, only traces of this
massive structure remain. And you can see the stumps
of the gantries over here. These metal bits
sticking out here. UNA RILEY: These metal bits. That, and they would have risen
hundreds of feet in the air. So this area we're
standing on right now, which is kind of a
wasteland, in a way. UNA RILEY: It is.
It is. JENNIFER REGAN: This would
have been all structures. And this would have
been hundreds of people. UNA RILEY: Yes, I mean, this
would have been a [inaudible] of activity. There would have been men
scurrying about on top of this huge big gantries,
working cranes, lifting, so this would have been
incredibly noisy, dangerous area. NARRATOR: The gantry
dominated the Belfast skyline for six decades. It had 16 movable cranes,
lifts, and walkways. It weighed over 6,000 tons. Rupert Keyser has come to talk
to one of the men who worked beneath it, former
shipworker George McAllister. RUPERT KEYSER: It must have
been a very awe-inspiring sight to people who'd come
here for the first time and seen this colossal
great lattice work of metal and these two ships
forming underneath it. Well, I came in here
as a 16-year-old boy, and I was amazed at the noise
and the number of people, the number of men working
in this particular area here alone. NARRATOR: The deafening sound
of the shipbuilders at work could be heard across the city. That was the first thing
any visitor would hear, was the noise of the
rivets being hammered and the riveters. The riveters were riveting all
day long with hammers, just hammering on a steel box. Those boys come out stone deaf. There's no doubt they
came out stone deaf. They had no ear protection
or anything like that. GEORGE MCALLISTER: No ear
protections, no safety boots, safety toe-capped boots,
no gloves, no helmet, nothing whatsoever. NARRATOR: Shipbuilding was
the city's main industry. The majority of
the workforce came from the Protestant
community of East Belfast. Jennifer and Una are exploring
the network of streets, which housed the workers
who built the Titanic. JENNIFER REGAN: So Una,
this is a typical street that the thousands of
Harland and Wolff workers would have worked on.
- Right. Which they would
have lived in. Yes, very much so. It's a typical terrace
street, and the workmen would have lived in these houses. NARRATOR: These simple houses
were heated by coal fires and lit by candlelight. They had no internal plumbing. And although each was
comprised of only four rooms, they would often be home to
a large number of people. You'd be surprised
at how big of a family could be living in there. As many as six
children, if not more. Wow. And there were thousands
of people who were working for Harland and Wolff, who are
living on the streets almost identical to this one. Yes, very much so. NARRATOR: The construction
of the Titanic had created an unprecedented
employment boom. Along with new houses, shops,
schools, and churches were also built. Across the city,
there was an explosion of building to accommodate
the new shipworkers and their families. Today, many houses
are being renovated, but hidden among the streets
are clues to what life was like here 100 years ago. JENNIFER REGAN: Una, looking
at this photograph of Belfast in the early 1900s, the
street we're standing on now has a lot of the
original features. It has, indeed. It has got the original cobbles. And not only that,
but the lampposts. JENNIFER REGAN: The
lampposts are beautiful. UNA RILEY: Absolutely. They would have been
the original gas lamps. And they're absolutely wonderful
that they're still here. So this is very close to
what a street would have looked like when Harland and
Wolff was at its busiest? Yes, very much so. If you were to take away
just these posts, taking out electricity, and just
have the lampposts, you could be
standing on a street where Titanic workers were
in practically every one of those houses. NARRATOR: Today, the Belfast
shipyard is no longer the city's main employer. Other industries
have taken over. But in the 1900s, the shipyard
dominated every aspect of the workers' lives. JENNIFER REGAN: Walking around
the streets of East Belfast, I've come to appreciate that
these workers always lived in the shadow of the shipyards. You could actually see Harland
and Wolff from where they live. All the workers would have
walked or taken the tram there together. They lived in very
close quarters in these terrace houses. And it gives you a sense
of the tight-knit community and how important the
shipyard was in their lives. NARRATOR: By 1910,
Harland and Wolff were employing 15,000
workers to build the Titanic, alongside her sister
ship, the Olympic. They used tried
and tested methods. First, they would lay a keel. Then they built a
frame on top of it. The frame was then
clad in a steel shell. Tens of thousands
of tons of steel were poured, rolled, and shaped. They were cut on site into
place, 30 feet by 6 feet, and then delivered
to the gantry, along a network of
railroad tracks. When these plates
were in position, construction would begin. The shipyard is littered with
the relics of this process. Looking for clues--
you're asking for clues. Let's have a look in here. Let's take this
up and we'll see. Here we are. Here, we're getting
pieces, look, see, there. There's a piece of a rivet. RUPERT KEYSER: That is-- Here's another-- here's
another little piece of a head of a rivet. And here's nuts and
bolts, a clip [inaudible] on [inaudible] nut. RUPERT KEYSER: Is it likely
that any of these items could have been used to build
the Olympic and Titanic? GEORGE MCALLISTER: Well,
this is the slipway that the Titanic came off. I cannot guarantee you
that they came off Titanic, but one never knows. RUPERT KEYSER: Sure. NARRATOR: Over three
million of these rivets were used to
hold the hull together. Further clues can be found in
the maze of railroad tracks, which an army of 50 small
cranes used to travel around the shipyard. Three of the cranes still stand. They were powered by steam. GEORGE MCALLISTER: Those
three cranes are the last of the steam cranes that's
left here in Harland's. They were here at
the time of Titanic. They helped to build Titanic. NARRATOR: When George McAllister
worked here in the 1970s, he operated a crane
just like this one. GEORGE MCALLISTER: That's the
old boiler behind you there. That made the steam. And he operated these levers
for loading the [inaudible].. NARRATOR: These cranes with
the workhorses of the shipyard. Able to lift five tons,
and using tried and tested technology, they were
extremely reliable. The simplicity of their design
meant that they would remain in service for decades. RUPERT KEYSER: It's amazing to
think that these cranes once helped build this
legendary vessel and they're just sitting
here rotting away. NARRATOR: It wasn't
just the machinery that had to be resilient. For the men building the
Titanic, conditions were tough. Well, when the shipyard first
started, when it first opened in the 1800s, the
men worked from 6:00 in the morning to 8:15 at
night, five days a week. RUPERT KEYSER: That's
14 hours a day. And from 8:00 in the morning
on a Saturday to 4:00 pm. It was a dangerous
job to be done. There was lots of injuries, such
as a piece of riveting flying off, bolts maybe falling
off the top of the ship on men working down below. And you just had to-- in those days, we
were glad of a wage, so they just had to
carry on with it. NARRATOR: Harland and
Wolff were tough employers. The shipyard workers had
very few labor rights. Men lined up every day
trying to get a day's work, and, in fact, if you were--
if you got a day's work, you used one of
these little boards. JENNIFER REGAN: What's this? UNA RILEY: Which is a
little wooden board. And it has a unique
number stamped in there. JENNIFER REGAN: 35315. UNA RILEY: Right. And that number would've
entitled to you to-- this little board entitled
you to many things, even the permission
to go to the toilet. You had to use that. You had you had to use that. And you were only allowed seven
minutes all day in the toilet. NARRATOR: There were hundreds of
different trades and thousands of skilled craftsmen at
work in the shipyard, from riveters, steelworkers,
fitters and joiners, to plumbers, cabinet makers,
painters and plasterers. UNA RILEY: I mean, it was
a whole world of industry. JENNIFER REGAN:
Thousands of people. Thousands of people,
all working together to produce magnificent ships. So what you're
describing is not just the building of a ship,
but it's the building of a city around the shipyard. It was like a city and they
did look after their citizens. Yes, they were tough employers,
but there was respect there. It was tough. And the men were tough. But they produced
some fantastic ships. NARRATOR: It took 15,000
men, 24,000 tons of steel, three million rivets,
and two years of work. Finally, the hull was
ready to be floated. JENNIFER REGAN: Una tell me
about the day of the launch, because we know that some
10,000 people showed up here. But actually, they were just
launching the outer shell of the boat, right? That's true. The ship was built here,
basically the hull, and it was into
these waters here the Titanic would be launched
on that day, the 31st of May, 1911. NARRATOR: The
hull's entire weight rested on rows of wooden
supports, called pit props. For the ship to enter
the water, these props had to be knocked away by hand. To find out more about this
highly dangerous procedure, marine engineer Rupert Keyser
has returned to the Titanic slipway with George McAllister. Now, she's the largest
ship in the world. It must have been an
extremely dangerous time, with this huge vessel towering
above and knocking away all the wooden supports. I mean, was it really
that dangerous? Yes, it was very dangerous,
because those pit props, as we called them, were
flying everywhere. Right. You could've of
got a leg broke. People could have been
killed, which they were. Were they flexing
under the weight? As they got so
many out, the ship was coming down onto the
rest that was left there and they were
actually bowing out, and they just shattered
under the tremendous force. Shot out. Shot out anywhere. NARRATOR: At exactly
12:14 pm on May 31, 1911, after final checks, and
with a signal from Lord Pirrie, the Harland and Wolff
chairman, the launch began. It was a dramatic moment. Titanic was in motion
for the first time. It took just 62 seconds
for the 24,000 ton hull to move down the slipway
into the River Lagan. For the people of Belfast,
this was a time of pride, achievement, and hope. But it came at a cost. One of the team assigned
to remove the pit props was crushed by falling timber. He died. The Titanic had claimed
a life before she'd even entered the water. After the launch,
work began immediately on equipping the hull. As well as huge steel
anchors, four mighty funnels were fitted. Only three of them had
any practical purpose. The fourth was there just
to make the Titanic look as impressive as her rivals. Two massive steam engines would
power her across the Atlantic. They were fed by 29
boilers and 159 furnaces. When the Titanic
sailed, 160 firemen would stoke them with over
600 tons of coal every day. The two engines each
stood over 30 feet high. In their time, they were
the largest ever built. Their design was very similar to
that of these smaller engines, housed in a museum in London. Rupert has come here to
see the engines in action and find out from steam engineer
Dick Fillery what it must have been like in the
Titanic's engine room. DICK FILLERY: This
engine here is in fact quite a small
[inaudible] expansion engine. The engines in the Titanic
would have been five times the length, four times as high. Instead of just one walkway
'round it like this, there have been three or four
walkways going up, right up the very top of the engine. And apart from that that, it
would've been dark and gloomy inside the boiler rooms. They didn't have lots
and lots of lights going. So that this thing would
tower up into the darkness, and make it-- even bigger than [inaudible]. And of course the engine
would be turning around. And, in fact, the
whole ship would shake as the engine was turning. So some people felt it quite
a scary place to have been. NARRATOR: The design of
the Titanic's engines was comparatively old fashioned. While the rival Cunard
Line had fitted their ships with turbines, the
Titanic's builders put their faith in a traditional
reciprocating design. RUPERT KEYSER: So why was
an engine of this type used to propel the Titanic? They were efficient. They used less fuel
than a simple engine. And also, they were
well tried technology. They'd been built for years. People knew how to put
them together properly. People knew how to
run them properly. And they were reliable. And that was what the
shipping company likes. NARRATOR: The
Titanic did, however, have an auxiliary
turbine engine, powered by the exhaust gases of
her two main engines. This drove a third, central,
four-bladed propeller. RUPERT KEYSER: That's a little
strange, because at the time, ships had either
reciprocating engines-- DICK FILLERY: Yeah. Or turbine engines. DICK FILLERY: Yeah. Why the combination? DICK FILLERY: It was
going for efficiency. One of the things you've got to
do, once you get in the ship, you've got to carry
your fuel with you. So the less fuel you can carry,
the more passengers, cargo, or whatever, you can
carry in the boat. NARRATOR: With the
engines fitted, the Titanic needed to be
moved out of the water into a dry dock, where all
the final work on the hull could be completed. The only dry dock that
could accommodate her was the Thompson Dry Dock. Rupert has come here to meet
Naval historian John Beatty from the Belfast Science Park. RUPERT KEYSER: This really is
quite an extraordinary site. Absolutely colossal is the size. It really does take
your breath away. It's fantastic to look at. Yes, indeed, the dock was
totally filled by the Titanic. NARRATOR: This was the
largest dry dock of its time, 850 feet long, equivalent
to three football fields, and 120 feet deep. To build a dry
dock on this scale was an incredible
engineering feat. Well, it really must have
been some huge undertaking to create a dock of this size,
especially 100 years ago. JOHN BEATTY: Yes, indeed. They knew at the outset that
they had a very big challenge to build this dock, as they
were building through very poor material, approximately
50 feet of reclaimed land, so basically mud. And, indeed, the dock itself,
hidden, where you cannot see, there is an enormous amount
of materials used in the dock. An absolutely stupendous
amount of concrete and brick. So it really was a
colossal engineering feat. It was. And a high risk-- a high
risk piece of engineering. NARRATOR: The aim was to
build the dry dock in three and a half years,
but eventually, it took seven years. It was ready just in
time for the Titanic. On February 3, 1912, tugboats
began the delicate process of maneuvering the Titanic
into the Thompson Dry Dock. When she was inside,
the gate was closed and the engines from
the nearby pump house began to drain the water. JOHN BEATTY: In the case
of the Thompson Dock, its 23 million imperial
gallons of water have to be taken
out to dry the dock. 23 million. 23 million-- and these pumps
could pump all that water out in 1 hour, 40 minutes. But in real terms, they would be
more careful in how they pumped the water out, because
they had to allow the ship to settle onto the keel blocks. NARRATOR: In the Titanic's
case, pumping lasted 12 hours. JOHN BEATTY: The operation
was made more complicated because of the extraordinary
length of the Titanic and the extreme
value of the vessel. They were extremely careful
that the 55,000 odd tons would settle precisely
on the keel blocks. They didn't want to take any
chance that they would damage the vessel, as they
[inaudible] and dried it out. NARRATOR: The final
stages of construction could now take place, fitting
her mighty three blade propellers, wiring the
ship's state of the art electrical systems, and
finally, painting the hull. By March 1912, the main
structural and engineering work was complete. Now the challenge was
to fit out the interior and transform the Titanic
into a floating palace. No expense was to be spared
in making her the most luxurious liner ever built. What I want to know next is
how the interior of the ship was built. Harland and Wolff
did not spare any money. They brought in thousands
of master craftsman to construct the most luxurious
interior of the Titanic. So what I wanted to do is to go
into the world of those master craftsman and understand
how they worked. NARRATOR: Historian Jennifer
Regan has come to Belfast City Hall to meet with Una Riley. This building was
opened in 1906, just one year before the
Titanic was commissioned. Today, it is a great showcase
of the grand design and expert craftsmanship which
built the Titanic. The ornate wooden paneling,
decorated ceilings, fixtures and fittings were all
the finest of their time. Many of the craftsmen
and artisans who would go on to work on
the Titanic worked here first. Now I've heard that the
City Hall is actually called the Stone Titanic locally. Why is that? That is true. Because it was conceived around
the same time as the Titanic was being conceived. And Lord Pirrie had been
a former Lord Mayor. He was involved with the
construction and design of this. And it's felt that he
took some of the designs from here to the Titanic. JENNIFER REGAN: What
I love about this room is all the period detailing,
because it was built just six years before the Titanic. So it's really the same
kind of period in design. And there's so much detail
in the ceiling, in all this cornicing,
in these columns. You've got the
stained glass windows. They're beautiful. UNA RILEY: Absolutely. I mean, they didn't do
things by half in Belfast at the beginning of
the 20th century. Everything was done to
the best, to the highest, to the best specifications,
just like Titanic. NARRATOR: The first
class accommodation would rival any
grand hotel on land, and its centerpiece would be the
sweeping grand staircase which led from the promenade deck
to a vast paneled dining room. In order to know what the
Titanic's interior really looked like, Jennifer
has traveled from Belfast to Northumberland, in the
Northeast of the British Isles. Here, in the ancient
town of Alnwick, she has uncovered an exact copy
of the Titanic's first class dining room. When the White Swan Hotel
was refurbished in 1936, they used interior
fittings and furnishings from the Titanic's
sister ship, Olympic. The Olympic's interiors were
identical to the Titanic's. The ships were designed and
built by the same Belfast craftsmen. And in the lobby of the hotel
is the last remaining section of the grand staircase from
the first class saloon. So John, what can you tell me
about this magnificent carved staircases? Wonderful example. This is the last surviving part
of the grand staircase from RMS Olympic, identical to what
was on an RMS Titanic in 1912 when she sank. This is quite
unique, because there is no other grand
staircase left in the world from the Olympic class liners. NARRATOR: The breathtaking
detail of the hotel dining room reveals more evidence of
the skills and expertise of the Belfast shipworkers. The ceilings, windows,
light fittings, and the exquisite
wood paneling, all reflect the golden
age of sea travel. Here is a rare
opportunity to sense what life must have been
like onboard the Titanic. So John, standing
here is about as close as we can get to
what it would have felt like inside the
Titanic dining room. Absolutely, yes. JENNIFER REGAN: We've got
these incredible plaster-work ceilings, we've
got stained glass, we've got all these panels. There's just so much to take in. JOHN WHITE: Yes,
absolute original. Obviously, the first class
dining room on Olympic was a lot larger than this. We're talking about probably
10 times larger than this. JENNIFER REGAN: That's enormous. I want to know more
about this woodwork. It's incredible. JOHN WHITE: It is. The craftsmanship here
is absolutely amazing. Now the Olympic
carvings were all made at Harland Wolff, same
as the ones in Titanic. And the craftsmen
spent many hours working day and night to produce
all this marvelous workmanship. NARRATOR: Pirrie knew that this
was the best way to attract big spending clients. John, I can tell from
looking at this woodwork that they were working towards
a very demanding clientele. Absolutely. This is first class paneling,
at it's very best in the height of 1911, 1912. JENNIFER REGAN: And
no detail is spared. Tell me about this
light fitting here. Is it bronze? JOHN WHITE: These are
absolutely original to the ship. Yes, they are bronze. There was hundreds
of these onboard. JENNIFER REGAN: And, of
course, state of the art, because they are electric.
JOHN WHITE: Yes, they are. Yes. JENNIFER REGAN: Beautiful. NARRATOR: Every
detail of the room is themed, a clue
to its function. I'll bring this
to your attention. We have some musical notes up
here and symbols, and a piece of paperwork all carved
into the woodwork. JENNIFER REGAN:
That's a music book. JOHN WHITE: Yes, absolutely,
and it's all hand carved by those workman
of Harland and Wolff. That's Incredible. That's so tiny. And the whole room
is music oriented. We have guitars. So it's a room that was
used for entertainment. Very much so. JENNIFER REGAN: So
all these symbols of entertainment and enjoyment. JOHN WHITE: Although--
yes, absolutely. This room, although, apart from
the use as a first class dining room, it was also used
for dancing and for music. And this really demonstrates
to me the level of detail that went into this room. And it's absolute staggering,
when you think about the number of people that would have
had to have been working on a room like this to
produce this level of detail. NARRATOR: John White
has a unique collection of memorabilia and artifacts
from both the Olympic and the Titanic. Again, these relics reveal
an outstanding level of craftsmanship and dedication. JENNIFER REGAN: When I see
the level of detail that went into the interior of
ships like the Titanic, it gives me a sense of actually
the scale of the workforce that would have been involved in
the interiors-- the craftsmen, metal work, the glassware,
the china, every detail down to the door handles. And that really shows me how
important the Titanic was for Belfast and how it
helped build the city, which was buzzing with activity
and master craftsmen. NARRATOR: At 8:00 o'clock on
the evening of April 2, 1912, the Titanic left Belfast
for the last time. She was bound for
Southampton, where she'd collect the passengers for
a maiden transatlantic voyage. English port of Southampton,te bound for New York, on April 10. She was the largest
and most luxurious ship the world had ever seen, a
unique piece of engineering. Her 2,000 passengers
and 1,500 crew believed they were
making history. Among them, was
the chief designer of the Titanic, Thomas Andrews. He brought with him nine key
workers from the shipyard, known as the Guarantee Group. Una, what was the
Guarantee Group? The Guarantee Group
were a very special group of men who would have gone on
the maiden voyage of each ship. And they would have been
the best that the yard had in the time. So they would have
been hand-picked. And the competition
to go onboard the maiden voyage of any
ship would have been highly fought over. And once you knew
you were awarded it, your family and everything
would have been very proud. So these men joined Thomas
Andrews onboard Titanic to deal with any little
problems that came up. NARRATOR: Disaster
came five days into the voyage, perhaps
the most notorious incident in Maritime history. A collision with an
iceberg caused damage that no one could repair. And the Titanic
sank in three hours. Almost 1,500 people died. As news of the tragedy traveled
back across the Atlantic, the city of Belfast
went into shock. JENNIFER REGAN: There
were thousands of people who worked on this project. It took years. There was an incredible amount
of skill that went into it. So, for the people in
Belfast, and the people who worked on this
ship, especially, it must've been devastating
when the ship went down. That is true. It was devastating, and
it was unbelievable. We heard about the
shipyard workers who broke down and
cried at the fact that this ship that they had
just sent away so few days before had sunk and all
those people had died. In fact, it was never talked
about in Belfast again for many, many years. NARRATOR: The Titanic's chief
designer, Thomas Andrews, was among the dead. So were the nine men
of the Guarantee Group. The shipyard was closed for
a single day of mourning. But the impact on the Belfast
shipyard was permanent. The golden age of the great
transatlantic liners was over. UNA RILEY: It was felt by
Belfast very, very much. In fact, all these things that
we have been talking about, the biggest gantry, the biggest
slipway, the biggest dry dock, they were never used again for
the purpose for which they had been built. NARRATOR: For Harland and Wolff,
the sinking of the Titanic was the beginning
of the decline. During the First World War, the
yard continued to make ships, but the slipways
and gantries, which were built for the Titanic, were
never to see work on that scale again. Rupert Keyser has discovered
one last relic of the shipyard's golden age. This small, almost
derelict vessel, until recently lying forgotten
in a Harbor in France, is the Nomadic. It was her job to ferry
first class passengers from continental Europe
to the harbor where they'd board the Titanic. Of all the ships built
by Harland and Wolff during the glory days of
the early 20th century, the Nomadic is the
only one that remains. A team of volunteers
intends to restore her to her original grandeur. Local historian Steven
Cameron explains to Rupert why the return of the Nomadic
is so important to the people of Belfast. The same style,
the same material, the same rivets that
are in this ship were also in Titanic as well. She's come home to Belfast, to
the place where she was born, to the home of Titanic. And that's where she should be. And it's fantastic to have
her back here in Belfast. NARRATOR: The Nomadic remains
the last surviving link with the Titanic and Belfast's
great era of shipbuilding. Nothing on the
scale of the Titanic had ever been attempted before. It was the greatest engineering
project of its time. RUPERT KEYSER: What's really
impressed me is the sheer array of skills needed to
build such a vessel. The parts needed
to create Titanic, they ranged from some
of the smallest ones, like rivets, up to
frames which were 80, 90 feet in length, plates
that were 30 feet in length. All this amazing amount of
material, all individually crafted, put together by hand
to create the world's most luxurious ship. JENNIFER REGAN: What I've
learned on my journey to rediscover "The Lost
World of the Titanic" is not only that White
Star Lines built the most magnificent ocean liner
the world has ever seen, but that they've brought
in an infrastructure into this booming
city of Belfast. So not only did they
build a huge shipyard, a community was being built
as well around the shipyards. And that there were thousands
of people, master craftsman, shipyard workers, who
were coming to the city to build this magnificent ship. NARRATOR: Although it ended
in disaster and grief, the story of the Titanic is
also one of skill, dedication, and extraordinary achievement. [music playing]
