Today we visited the Titanic Museum in Belfast. Every part of it was very deliberately designed from the exterior to the symbolism of various building materials throughout the exhibits. I didn't take a lot of photos because I just wanted to read about the exhibits and enjoy the experience, but I did end up with a few that struck me.
The building itself is supposed to be suggestive of the shape of the ship. You go to the top of the 4th floor and look out the glass windows at the actual dry dock space where the Titanic was built in 1912. If you go outside, you can actually walk the full length of the space. Most obvious take away: it was a huge ship. The model below shows a scaled image of the ship if it were in the dry dock next to the museum. You'd basically be looking at the main deck eye to eye on the top floor of the museum.
Again, take away point: it was huge. This is one of the side propellers. It was taller than a double decker bus.
I was fascinated with the details of the design work. This is a photo of the dozens of designers hand-drew all of the specs down to each bolt hole in the hull and the handles on the bathroom fixtures in the first class suites. They had digitized all of these plans and you could scroll through and zoom in on them. Very cool.
The museum had a lot of interactive displays. The projections on the floor in this room kept changing and asking you to identify different features or try to step on all the bolts on the floor at a pace fast enough to be a fastener on the construction crew. The kids were very engaged.
Another little thing that caught my attention: There was no laundry on board. The crew had to stock enough linen napkins to make it all the way across without washing them (they had 45,000!).
This is one of the original life jackets from the ship. Out of 3,500, only 12 still exist. The wall behind is a tribute to all of the lives lost.
After the disaster, all of the cumulative factors that contributed to it were analyzed and many changes were made to ship design, emergency communication protocols, and safety measures. It was a combination of many factors that led to the loss of so many lives, but one factor was that the lookout on the ship did not have binoculars because the key to the binocular box accidentally got taken by a staff member who was reassigned at the last minute and took the key with him. Tragic.
One of the actual violins that the musicians played as the ship went down. This musician made it off the ship along with his violin. It is worth noting that the museum has chosen not to display any relics from the wreckage. It was interesting that our visit coincided with the loss of the Titan submersible that was taking 5 people down to see the Titanic wreck. They lost communications about 2/3s of the way down on the decent and the US Navy subsequently reported that they had picked up a clear implosion at the same time. Those aboard would have been killed instantly. The forensic investigation into the failed design is about to get underway.
It feels like this captures the sense of the neighborhood in Falls well.
After the Titanic we drove over to the Falls and Shankill neighborhoods of Belfast to see the so-called Peace Walls that separate(d) the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. There was much violence in these areas and throughout Northern Ireland during the Troubles (1960s-1998 Black Friday Agreement). I'm not sure that peace walls was/is a very good description. Although these walls effectively separated these groups from close proximately and mitigated the opportunity for violence, they also essentially redlined entire neighborhoods and the lack of integration continues to this day.
Streets that run up against the wall just dead end. There are only a few places where you can transit from one neighborhood to the other.
Here is one of the gates through the wall. I read they are still sometimes closed. I don't know if that is true or not.
You can see how high they are - taller than the double decker bus. And they extend for blocks and blocks (some of the walls have now come down, but many still stand)
There are older and newer paintings and taggings on the walls. The older one here reads "Let go of the past, hope for a better future" While there are a few other messages of unity with similar sentiment, most are not focused on reconciliation or peace.
The majority of the wall that we saw looked more like this - covered in huge stylized graffiti that was even being added to on this particular day.
HOWEVER, there are also walls inside both neighborhoods that are also covered with murals.
Many of the murals were memorials to leaders on both sides, but there were other messages as well.
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This was a memorial park area in Falls, in the Catholic neighborhood. Note the Irish flag flying here.
This is the memorial park on the Protestant side.
British flag flying here
I was particularly struck by the overt parallels drawn between the Irish Republicans (Catholics) and the Palestinians, and between the British Unionists (Protestants) and the Israelis.
Bobby Sands was a Catholic who died in a hunger strike while imprisoned by the British. Khader Adnan was a Palestinian who died in a hunger strike while imprisoned by Israel.
This is also a tribute to Bobby Sands
A call to boycott Israel in support of Palestine.
In the Shankill neighborhood is a large salute to Israel.
Two further murals in the Falls Neighborhood:
As we walked along the wall, we noticed a number of riot police vehicles ahead. No police were visible, there was hardly anyone on the street. We looked around us more carefully to see if there was something we needed to be aware of. A mom was walking by with her stroller and two kids and did not see alarmed, so we deemed it ok to continue our walk.
In the next two blocks we discovered the source of the police presence. This is the 'March Season' in Northern Ireland and we had stumbled across an Orange march by the Protestants in Shankill nominally celebrating the victory of British King William of Orange (Protestant) over King James II (Catholic) in 1688. This was not immediately evident to us historically-deficient Americans, but after some googling while waiting for the bands to come by, we got a little more background. It still boggles the mind that there is so much celebration for an event that happened 300 years ago (before our country even existed), but I know its not culturally unique at all.
We found a local news article that framed this gathering as a potential high risk event. After passing this point, the marchers were scheduled to move through the catholic neighborhood of Falls. The marchers stand on the claim that they have the right to do this. The catholic locals are offended by this and an expected crowd of 200 protestors was expected. On top of the riot police presence, there was also a police helicopter flying overhead. There is a parade commission that regulates routes, etc. They established that no banners could be flown while parading through the Falls area and the only songs the bands could play were hymns. (I note that one band was playing the Battle Hymn of the Republic when they came by us. They rest were playing pipe and drum tunes that I didn't recognize).
A street a few blocks over in the Falls region (Irish flag flying).
This flag was also flying on a number of poles - it is stars in the shape of the big dipper and represents the Starry Plough - It was flown during the Easter Uprising in 1916 and is still a sign of the Sinn Fein political party today.
The horizontal bright orange feathers sticking out the side of the hats were funny to me.
There were 15 bands total. Most of those playing appeared to be school age with many older men marching along side. I don't know if these were alumni from particular parochial schools or what.
The little kids who were involved were adorable. I'm on the fence about how I feel about this. Is this indoctrination at a very young age, or just kids having fun in a parade. Probably both. As I was googling for more info on the marches, I found a very moving article about them. In the end it was an observation 'we worship separately, socialize separately, in large part work separately, and most importantly educate separately. Until we integrate education, we'll never have true peace'. This felt very accurate and applies to so many places beyond Northern Ireland.
A very different meaning of LOL = Loyal Orange Lodge. There were several hundred men marching along with the bands with these orange stoles. They are members of community organizations (perhaps like the Lion's club or Elks?)
We finished up the walk through the Shankill neighborhood and the other murals within that area were very pro-British:
The language was pretty strong. Tribute below to '5 innocent protestants murdered':
This was interesting. It as a rant against Prime Minster Tony Blair's efforts to pull British troops out of Northern Ireland, leaving the Nationalists without military support.
A tribute to the victims of Sinn Fein bombings, including children.
Equating Sinn Fein with ISIS.
"We remember the victims of provisional Sinn Fein genocide" Using the word genocide is particularly provocative and in my view in accurate.
I appreciated this unusual sentiment. The cross of crosses not only marks 45 years of violence and loss, but makes an appeal from the place of sacrifice, "let this be the year the conflict ends".
A final image related to a challenge that should bring us all together: climate change
And an appeal: reduce your carbon footprint.
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