Between the Mountains and the Gantries

Belfast’s maritime heritage is not restricted to the tragic Titanic.

In this short extract from Will Morrison’s memoir Between the Mountains and the Gantries, we learn a little more about the global reach of the ‘shipyard’.

Summer passed its zenith, and I was still not in longs [long trousers]. I knew that this state of affairs couldn’t last much longer, for surely by now my mother had enough money in the Co-op club to buy me flannels. ‘Not just yit,’ she would say, when I raised the matter. ‘Just be patient a wee bit longer.’ I needed a reason to force the issue. One evening, a newspaper headline laid it in my lap.

The world had heard of the Titanic, the Olympic and Britannic, because of their fates, but the Yard had built many great liners. Their exotic names read like a geography of the world, Arlanza, Austurius, Andes, Minnekahda, Regina Pittsburg, Laurentia, Narkunda, Mooltan, Maloja, Doric, Statendam, Reina del Pacifico, Minnewaska, Minnetonka, Rajputana, Rawalpindi. The Castle Line had its own Belfast roll of honour: Arundel Castle, Warwick Castle, Llangibby Castle, Dunbar Castle, Winchester Castle, Stirling Castle, Athlone Castle, Dunottar Castle, Dunvegan Castle, Capetown Castle.

When one made the newspaper headlines or was bruited on the wireless – some were sunk by U-boats during the Second World War – somewhere in Belfast an Islandman would be saying at his dinner in a kitchen or to friends and strangers in a pub, ‘I worked on her, an’ I mind th’ day she went down the slips.’

an extract from the memoir by Will Morrison, Between the Mountains and the Gantries, published by Appletree Press.