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08th December 2011
FSB raise money for good cause!
We were delighted to be able to host the Federation for Small businesses Christmas Networking event on board the Barge last night, in aid of NI Cancer Fund for Children. Lots of money was raised through an auction and ballots - well done FSB!
For more information about the services FSB offer and how to become a member go to www.fsb.org.uk.
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25th August 2011
“Spread the good news of the Barge”
On August 17th the Lagan Legacy on the Barge was visited by a group of 28 mature scholars from the Lisburn University of the 3rd Age. Commenting on the visit Lisburn U3A organiser Judith Prentice stated that 'everyone' thought the 'exhibition' was 'excellent' before adding that the group were also 'very impressed' with the 'passion' shown by Lee Lavis (Lagan Legacy Heritage, Education, Research and Outreach Officer) when delivering his talk about the history of the SS Canberra.As a non-profit making charity that is financially reliant on visits from the public and groups such as the Lisburn University of the 3rd age the Lagan Legacy would like to take this opportunity to thank Judith and her friends for the support they have shown our organisation. -
04th August 2011
RMS Almanzora
A member of Helen’s Bay Probus Organisation, Mr Stan Griffin, recently informed Lagan Legacy that he’d once been a passenger on a Belfast-built ship called RMS Almanzora, and wondered if we could find anything out about her. It emerged that she was like many other Lagan vessels, boasting an intriguing past. She was in the last of the ‘A’ class series of ships built by Harland & Wolff, Belfast, for the Royal Mail Line’s South American service. Almanzora, just like her sister ship Andes, was attached to the Tenth Cruiser Squadron, engaged mainly in WWI convoy service in the North and Central Atlantic.
Almanzora was H&W Ship Number 441, a 16,034 ton vessel launched on the 19th November 1914, and completed and handed over to Royal Mail Line on the 7th October 1915. Almanzora was requisitioned and converted into WWI armed merchant cruisers.
Reconditioned after war service, Almanzora made her maiden voyage as a passenger liner in 1920. Her first-class accommodation was elaborately decorated in the Tudor and Jacobean styles and she also had a winter garden, a new feature for a ship on the South American line. She even had a children’s play room and ‘social hall’!
After an uneventful peacetime career, she was on her last voyage from South America in 1939 when WWII broke out. She was immediately requisitioned again, as a troopship, and during her war service made many voyages to South and East Africa, later taking part in the Sicilian landings. She survived both a collision with another RML ship, ‘Orduna’ in the Red Sea, and one with a German aircraft, which crashed into her hull. Her final task was the repatriation of European nationals after the end of the war. She was broken up at Blythe, Scotland, in 1948. There’s a wonderful wood and metal scale model of her (552 x 1890 x 237 mm) belonging to the National Maritime Museum, Grenwich, and she appeared on a number of postcards, and at least one brand of cigarette card.
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04th August 2011
Say It With Flowers
Members of Belfast’s Knock Probus organisation held a special River Lagan event on the 2nd August 2011, much of it on Lagan Legacy’s Belfast Barge. After their down-river trip on the Lagan Boat Company’s MV Mona, they arrived on the Barge for coffee and scones, followed by a presentation about the Belfast-built Flower Class Corvettes.
Thirty four of these plucky little 800 ton fighting ships were built on the Lagan during WWII, and many of them survived heroic duties escorting the vital Atlantic convoys. Thirty five of the Allied Fleet’s 269 Flowers were lost at sea; 22 were torpedoed by U-boats and 4 sunk by mines. It is thought that the Flowers participated in the sinking of 47 U-boats and 4 Italian submarines. Ten submarines were sunk, destroyed, or captured with the participation of Belfast built Flowers, which also saved many thousands of mariners’ lives from sunken or damaged ships.Poignantly, the day that Knock Probus chose to visit the Belfast Barge, the 2nd August, was the anniversary of the completion and handover in 1940 of one of Belfast’s Flowers, HMS Peony, Harland and Wolff Ship number 1,066. And sadly, the very first Flower to be sunk during WWII was a Belfast-built vessel – HMS Picotee- sunk by U-568 almost exactly 70 years ago - on 12 August 1941 with a loss of 66 crew.Photo: HMS Picotee, Photo courtesy of Flower Class Corvette Association.
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04th August 2011
The Band Played On
On the 18th May 2011 Lagan Legacy’s Belfast Barge was the safest place in Northern Ireland. No self-respecting criminal would have dared cross the gangway!
Thirty-eight members of the Police Historical Society gathered in the vessel’s conference room for a short presentation by Legacy staff about the Lagan’s maritime and industrial past. Then they visited the Barge’s museum and exhibition, and a few stayed on board for a snack in the Galley Restaurant. During the presentation, Lagan Legacy’s resident journalist and writer Charlie Warmington reminded his constabulary guests that it was a poignant day in the history of the Belfast-built RMS Titanic.In 1912, a month after the doomed ship sank, the ship’s bandleader Wallace Hartley was buried back home in England. As Titanic floundered, Wallace conducted the world’s most enduring finale with unimaginable virtuosity. The 33-year-old Lancashire violinist, jostled by frantic passengers, calmly grouped his little band together on the tilting deck. They were dressed in green-decorated band outfits, with hastily donned overcoats. Their makeshift bandstand, a few square feet of wooden deck, was their last post, under a pale limelight of twinkling stars. Wallace had a gold fountain pen in his pocket and a young fiancé in Yorkshire. With his violin in one hand, he raised the other, beckoned the opening notes, and led his band into their final performance. His gleaming black shoes, showing green socks, gently tapped the rhythm as a vast Atlantic inched towards his feet. Icy fathoms waited impatiently to clap cold hands on his band’s last chord - a lost chord; was it Nearer My God To Thee, a waltz called Autumn, or ragtime? We’ll never know. The concert ended and the audience went home - some forever. Wallace Hartley, body number 224, was recovered from the sea several weeks later and was buried on the 18th May in 1912, in Colne cemetery, near his boyhood home. Bethel Methodist Church, where he’d once been a choirboy, seated 700 people. Over 1,000 packed its pews, with 40,000 waiting silently outside and lining the narrow streets. The whole world knew that Wallace’s band played on. Seven bands played on his funeral march. He’d been a virtuoso when only 15 years old. He’d performed on the Mauretania and Lusitania. Titanic was his 80th voyage. A newspaper branded his funeral as “pageantry beyond belief” and stated “the part played by the orchestra during Titanic’s last dreadful moments will rank among the noblest in the annals of heroism at sea.” Wallace’s rosewood coffin bore the final strains.
