As we know, RMS
Titanic was on her ill-fated maiden voyage a century ago this week. Less well-known: the tender ship to
Titanic and her sister
Olympic was the SS
Nomadic. The ship was built on Slipway No. 1 of
Harland and Wolff Shipyards alongside the liners (
Olympic and Titanic were built on slipways 2 and 3, respectively). The massive liners -- each nearly nine hundred feet long and measuring some 45,000 tons -- were too large to dock at Cherbourg, so
Nomadic was used to ferry mail, passengers and cargo aboard at Cherbourg, the liners' last port of call before crossing the Atlantic.
She saw service in both world wars, as a
troop carrier in WWI and again as a troop transport, minelayer and coastal patrol vessel in WWII. After the second war, she returned to service as a tender for
Queen Mary and
Queen Elizabeth.
Decommissioned in 1968,
Nomadic was converted into a
floating restaurant in Paris. When the business failed around the turn of the century, her superstructure was torn down so she could be towed out to Le Havre. After her owner's death in 2005, she seemed destined for the scrapyard until a group of maritime history enthusiasts began raising funds to buy and restore her. The Northern Ireland government's Department for Social Development purchased the ship and brought her home to Belfast on a
barge for restoration at Harland and Wolff, a
company now mostly devoted to offshore renewable energy.
And thus it is that century after
Titanic and for almost certainly the last time ever, a
White Star vessel is at the
Harland and Wolff shipyards.
The restorations were
not completed in time for the
Titanic centennial, but later this year
Nomadic, which has been called "the most significant bit of
Titanic heritage not at the bottom of the sea," will be open for visitors.
posted by krilli at 3:32 PM on April 11, 2012 [2 favorites]