Qualla: Titanic Memorial, Belfast

Titanic Memorial, Belfast: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hajotthu, CC BY-SA 3.0. On Donegall Square, in the gardens that wrap the eastern side of Belfast City Hall, a woman in white marble holds a black laurel wreath above the head of a drowning sailor. Two mermaids lift him from waves that emerge, frozen, from the top of the plinth. The figures stand twelve feet high on a plinth of another ten. The whole composition was carved by Sir Thomas Brock from Carrara marble in the years after the disaster, and to walk around it today is to read, on bronze plaques arranged in alphabetical order, the names of every one of the 1,512 passengers and crew who died when the Titanic went down on 15 April 1912. It is the only memorial in the world to do that.

Image: Hajotthu | CC BY-SA 3.0

Titanic Memorial, Belfast: A City Decides to Remember

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Polley, CC BY-SA 2.0. Within days of the sinking, Belfast was already arguing about how to commemorate it. The city had built the ship. Harland and Wolff's draughtsmen had drawn her lines, her riveters had driven her hull plates, and many of the men who went down with her had come from Belfast streets...

Image: Bill Polley | CC BY-SA 2.0

Titanic Memorial, Belfast: Funding the Marble

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0. The money came in fast, and from people who had reason to care. By the end of May, £1,035 had been raised. About a third was from ordinary members of the public; £231 from employees of Harland and Wolff, who had built the ship; £105 from the White Star Line, who had owned her; an...

Image: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Titanic Memorial, Belfast: The 1920 Unveiling

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Erl Johnston, CC BY-SA 4.0. It took until 26 June 1920 to finish the memorial. The dedication ceremony, held on a hot sunny Saturday, was led by Field Marshal Viscount French, the last Lord Lieutenant of Ireland - already by then a political anachronism, since the Irish War of Independence was raging and Ir...

Image: Erl Johnston | CC BY-SA 4.0

Titanic Memorial, Belfast: Twenty-Two Names, Twenty-Eight Dead

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. The list on the plinth is incomplete. When the names were chosen, the count of Northern Ireland casualties stood at twenty-two. Later research established that twenty-eight people from Northern Ireland died on the Titanic - four more crew members, one Second Class passenger, and ...

Image: Ardfern | CC BY-SA 3.0

Titanic Memorial, Belfast: The Wheel and the Garden

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Man vyi, Public domain. For decades the memorial stood awkwardly in the middle of the road on Donegall Square North, where drivers kept failing to see it and crashing into it. In 1960, exhausted by the accidents, the council moved it a few hundred yards into the City Hall grounds. The little fishing vil...

Image: Man vyi | Public domain