Posted on 08/05/2019 10:52:03 AM PDT by NRx
I take it back. H&W were the naval architects as well.
The shipyards in Belfast may have provided financial justification for the UK to retain Northern Ireland while withdrawing from what became the Republic of Ireland. The Protestant majority in Northern Ireland identified as British and were vehemently opposed to becoming part of a majority Catholic state. However, Britain had to have some motive other than their sentiments to justify retaining Northern Ireland. In our time, that reason is gone, and the UK is no longer a world power.
I think that citizens of the Irish Republic need to think long and hard before creating a bitter minority of substantial size with no plan to integrate them.
Northern Ireland would be better off as a country independent of both the UK and the Republic of Ireland. They could be a free market enclave like Switzerland.
My father spent almost twenty years as a US merchant marine deck officer and has a stock of crazy union stories even though he was a member.
No. The president of the White Star Line bragged that that was the case, but it was never official. And even if it was, it was nothing more than advertising hyperbole. There is no such thing as an unsinkable ship.
There's a lot of money to be had in those niche markets.
Yup. Sank in just under an hour.
uh, no. That was the newspapers in the age of Yellow Journalism.
It was also discovered that the water tight doors between compartments were not closed on several critical compartments, in fact, it appears that crewmen had blocked them from closing, accelerating the sinking.
It came out in the inquest that while that statement “God Himself could not sink this Ship” was attributed to the president of the White Star Lines, an American Company, it was actually hyperbole made up by a reporter for one of the numerous New York Newspapers that was quickly picked up in Great Britain and became popular among the populace.
The irony of the claimed statement came to the forefront in the public mind when the ship sank on its maiden voyage since it seemed as if God had taken the statement as a challenge, requiring a comeuppance of Biblical proportions and many sermons were delivered on the hubris wrongly attributed to the White Star president.
And I'm not sure Protestant Ulster would be more free market than the south. Too many older industries and entrenched unions.
I did notice that the Protestant areas were for Brexit, while the Catholic areas were against it.
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