El TITANIC en el puerto de Belfast (1911)

Escala del TITANIC en el puerto de Belfast y la partida hacia su destino ya tan conocido.

Esta es la explicación sobre el video y su historia. Está en inglés, lamentablemente.

After the death of her cinema projectionist husband in England, his widow discovers in her garden shed a rusting canister below his work bench which contains authentic period newsreel film ( which appeared to have been forgotten ) of the R.M.S.Titanic at rest in her engraving ( fitting out ) dock in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1911 shortly after she had been launched there on 31/5/11.

Unfortunately this is the only actual film of the famous ship in existence and it does not last long. To make the video an acceptable length commercially, the producers of this film also included period film of the construction of her elder sister, R.M.S.Olympic whose keel was laid in 1908 and the ice flows from 1912 to give viewers an insight of what the origin of Titanic was like and the environment during her tragic collision accident with an iceberg at 11.40p.m. on Sunday 15/4/12.

Also seen is authentic footage of the Mackay-Bennett, which sailed out of Halifax , Nova Scotia, Canada being chartered by the undertakers ( morticians ) acting for the relatives of the deceased, in a quest to find and preserve bodies recovered from the sinking location in the North Atlantic where crew and passengers perished.

The saviour ship of the 705 souls aboard who survived was R.M.S. Carpathia, which is seen steaming across the ocean. You will also see the White Star line offices in New York and people helping to organise relief for survivors together with certain of Titanic's suriving crew including Robert Hichens the coxain who was actually at the ship's wheel during the collision and was notionally put in charge of the same lifeboat as The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Carpathia's captian, Sir Arthur Rostron is also seen but he does not seem happy to be filmed for too long!

The point is that since R.M.S. Olympic was the elder sister ship, she attracted the bulk of the publicity causing the media to pass her off as the Titanic, after the tragedy on film and in photographs since obviously there was no other cine film of Titanic available.

Undoubtedly if you see old film of The Titanic, apart from what is mentioned above, it is probably of the Olympic. Typical are the launch - Olympic's hull was painted grey for the cameras of the day and at Southampton on her maiden voyage in June 1911, by which time it had been painted regulation black separated by a gold band which separated the white painted upper structure.

Some people still doubt that the ship in the opening shot is " Titanic." Unless you were actually there, or can prove the " historians " wrong, please be my guest !

As far as I am concerned the opening film is " the only film of Titanic in existence ."