Recently watched

A few days ago, having got home exhausted from the work crisis du jour, I went to Netlix looking for something distracting, and found "Titanic: Blood and Steel". This joint Irish-Italian production is not the usual Titanic fare; it's a twelve-part miniseries centered on the building of the ship, and takes place in Belfast, Northern Ireland from 1909 to 1912. The principal character is a metallurgist named Mark Muir who comes to the shipbuilding firm Harland and Wolff with a recommendation from J.P. Morgan, the man paying for Titanic and her sisters. The action is centered on the shipyard and in the homes of the people principally involved, both shipyard workers and managers, and touches on the politics and the religious and economic divisions of the time. In one episode, Winston Churchill comes to town to argue for home rule for Ireland, an idea not at all to the liking of Belfast's Protestant majority.

I watched the last episode, in which the newly finished ship leaves Belfast for Southampton and its fateful maiden voyage, yesterday. I really enjoyed the series and wished there were more episodes, but of course there can't be.

In real life, Harland and Wolff built fifty ships for White Star, including Titanic's two sister ships, Olympic, which sailed for 24 years before being scrapped during the Depression, and Britannic, which was sunk by a mine during the first World War. Recently the last surviving former White Star ship, Nomadic, returned to Belfast to be refurbished as a museum ship by -- who else -- Harland and Wolff. The firm is still in business, and now builds oil platforms and offshore wind turbines.