Belfast Titanic memorial

#100waysoftravel The Titanic Memorial in Belfast was erected to commemorate the lives lost in the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912. It was funded by contributions from the public, shipyard workers, and victims' families, and was dedicated in June 1920. It sits on Donegall Square in central Belfast, Northern Ireland in the grounds of Belfast City Hall. The Titanic Memorial in Belfast The memorial presents an allegorical representation of the disaster in the form of a female personification of Death, or Fate, holding a laurel wreath over the head of a drowned sailor raised above the waves by a pair of mermaids. It has been used as the site of annual commemorations of the Titanic disaster. For a while it was obscured by the Belfast Wheel that was removed in April 2010. It is now the centrepiece of a small Titanic memorial garden opened on 15 April 2012, the centenary of the disaster. Together with the garden, it is the only memorial in the world to commemorate all of the victims of the Titanic, passengers and crew alike. The memorial consists of a group of four figures set on a plinth, standing a total of 22 feet (6.7 m) high. The figures are carved from Carrara marble and stand 12 feet (3.7 m) high. At the centre of the design is a standing female figure, thought variously to symbolise either Fame or a female version of Thanatos, the ancient Greek personification of death. She holds a black laurel wreath in her outstretched hand above the heads of the three figures below. They comprise two mermaids at her feet bearing a dead seaman above the waves, which emerge from the top of the plinth.[5] The plinth's front and back faces feature two small bronze water-fountains in the shape of the heads of gargoyle-like creatures with recessed eyes, stumpy noses and webbed antlers.[5] The plinth's front face bears the following inscription, focusing exclusively on the heroism of the local victims: Erected to the imperishable memory of those gallant Belfastmen whose names are here inscribed and who lost their lives on the 15th April 1912, by the foundering of the Belfast-built R.M.S. Titanic, through collision with an iceberg, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. Their devotion to duty and heroic conduct, through which the lives of many of those on board were saved, have left a record of calm fortitude and self-sacrifice which will ever remain an inspiring example to succeeding generations. 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'[5] On the sides of the plinth are inscribed the names of 22 men from Belfast who died in the disaster. They are listed in order of shipboard rank rather than alphabetical order, as was the practice at the time; thus Thomas Andrews, as a managing director of Harland and Wolff, is listed first, while the lowest-ranking crew members occupy the tail end of the list.[5] Nine of the Belfast victims were members of a Harland and Wolff "guarantee party" aboard Titanic to id