Conjuring the ‘ship of dreams’: Spatial narratives and making the absent present around and within Titanic Belfast

Abstract

Powerful prosthetic memories of the Titanic story have circulated in popular culture for more than a century and have become the focus of several experiential museums and Titanic-focused heritage sites on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the doomed liner was built. Drawing on recent field work, this article analyses the ways in which a series of engaging, multisensory and three-dimensional spatial narratives have been deployed within the new Titanic Belfast signature attraction and the surrounding memoryscape to make the absent ship present for visitors once more. These spatial narratives inform an affective heritage approach that focuses, not on the tragedy of Titanic’s sinking, but on feelings of awe and wonder at the scale and grandeur of the great ship, allowing memory managers to tell a celebratory, Belfast-focused origin story for this internationally renowned ‘ship of dreams’.