Belfast pays tribute to designer of Titanic

Belfast is to pay formal tribute next week to one of the men responsible for what is regarded as Belfast’s greatest achievement – the Titanic.

The Lord Mayor of Belfast Jim Rodgers will unveil a plaque commemorating Thomas Andrews, who designed Titanic; exactly 90 years to the day after Titanic left Belfast for the first and last time, on Tuesday April 2 1912.

The plaque, commissioned by the Ulster History Circle, is being unveiled at the house in Windsor Avenue, off the Lisburn Road, where Andrews lived for less than four short years before his death on board the ship he was so instrumental in creating.

It had been feared that the house had been demolished, but extensive research revealed that it is still very much in use - as the headquarters of the Irish Football Association.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the fateful maiden voyage of Titanic, and Belfast City Council, in conjunction with the Ulster Titanic Society, has organized a series of special events to commemorate her departure from Belfast on April 2 1912.

The Titanic: Made In Belfast festival, organized by Belfast City Council and sponsored by Citybus, starts this coming Saturday (March 30) and continues until April 7, and features lectures, exhibition, tours of both the City and the shipyard, showings of the films A Night To Remember and Titanica, re-creations of the atmosphere in Belfast on the weekend before she sailed away and a dramatic reconstruction of the controversial public enquiry into the great ship's untimely demise.

Contemporary eyewitness accounts describe Andrews playing an active role in the ship's evacuation, right up until the last recorded sighting, still on the boat deck of Titanic, throwing wooden deckchairs to people in the icy waters below, before the ship slipped below the waves of the north Atlantic to their final resting place.

(AMcE)