Titanic-Ship of Dreams

White Star Line

The White Star Line, the owners of Titanic were a British shipping company who provided passenger and cargo services between the British Empire and the United States. While many other shipping lines focused primarily on speed, White Star branded their services by focusing more on providing steady and comfortable passages, for both upper class travellers and immigrants.

Today, it is most famous for the loss of Titanic in 1912. Despite this and a number of other accidents and sinking, the company retained a prominent hold on shipping markets around the globe before falling into decline during the Great Depression. This led to a merger with its chief rival, Cunard Line, which is still in operation today.

At the beginning of the 20th Century The Cunard Line had two large passenger ships operating on the Atlantic, The Lusitania and the Mauretania. Not wanting to fall behind their competitor The White Star Line ordered the Olympic class liners: Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. It had long been customary for many shipping lines to have a common theme for the names of their ships. White Star gave their ships names ending in -ic while Cunard went with -ania.

While Cunard was famed for the speed of their ships, the Olympic class were to be the largest and most luxurious ships in the world. Olympic, however, was the only ship of this class to have a successful career. But more of that later.

The ships were to be built in Belfast by the Harland and Wolff Shipbuilding Company.

Harland & Wolff

Between 1900 and 1930, Harland and Wolff was Belfast's biggest employer by a long way. Thousands of people worked in the ship yards and demand for ocean liners was huge. Although ships are still built in Harland and Wolff today, the number of ships and people actually employed is much less than in the heyday of the early 20th century.

The Harland and Wolff shipyard was founded in 1861 by Edward James Harland and Gustav Wilhelm Wolff. At its height, Harland and Wolff and the ship yard in Belfast became one of the biggest ship builders in the world. Harland and Wolff own one of the world's largest dry docks, which is in Belfast. They constructed over 70 ships for the White Star Line, The Titanic being the best known of these.

Construction on Titanic began in 1909.

The Workforce

15,000 men worked on the construction of The Titanic some as young as 14 years old. It was noisy and dangerous work. Thousands of men carrying equipment along planks high above the hull spelled danger. Men were injured by falling or being hit by equipment. 8 men died during its construction and 246 were injured. One worker was crushed to death at the launch.

About 20% of the workforce was made up of unskilled labourers. The skilled labourers carried out the many specialised jobs needed to build a luxury liner.

Workers on their way home from another days work. The Titanic can be seen in the background.

Each Friday workers were paid in cash. Skilled workers earned about £2 per week while unskilled workers earned about £1.

Workers were also fined for crimes or misdemeanours committed on the site. For example a worker would lose one days pay for stealing a tool, half a days pay for being late or playing soccer during working hours and a quarter days pay for making tea or smoking.

Building Titanic

Harland and Wolff employed thousands of men, with over 15,000 working on Titanic alone. The men worked six days a week with a half an hour for lunch each day. Many jobs involved working with steel including welders, riveters, platers and plumbers. Carpenters worked with wood to design things like cabinets and staircases, while architects designed the ship in their offices.

Titanic was built in a graving or dry dock. This is a large enclosed dock with all of the water taken out so that workers can easily move around the outside of a ship. Harland and Wolff had three of them - Hamilton, Alexandra and Thompson. Thompson Dock was the largest and was designed to accommodate Titanic. You can still visit it today.

Titanic Dock Today

The architect of Titanic and its sister ships Olympic and Britannic was Alexander Carlisle. The designer was born in Ballymena and is generally thought to have been responsible for much of the internal design of the ships. Having retired in 1910, Thomas Andrews took over from Carlisle.

Nearly every structural part of the ship as well as many of their fixtures and fittings was designed and made on-site.

Alexander Carlisle

Thomas Andrews

The first step in building the biggest ship in the was to construct the strongest hull. Steel plates covered the structure to create the hull, or outer shell. The plates were held together using steel rivets. Over 3 million rivets were used in the building of the Titanic. Four person teams used long hammers to beat the rivets into place. They were paid based on how many rivets they fitted making this very competitive work between the different teams.

Rivet

A record of 12,000 rivets hammered in one week was set in 1909. The noise from the shipyard was deafening as thousand of men hammered steel and rivets into place all day every day for months.