A recent visit to the Titanic Experience in Belfast offered food for thought. My grandparents Anne and Johnny moved from Liverpool to Belfast during the Second World War to escape the bombs! The move was prompted because, on their way to the air-raid shelter, my toddler Aunt Mary was blown out of my grandfather’s arms.
Johnny got a job in Harland and Wolff. He must have made a convincing Protestant, because he worked there for five years. One day his friend spotted that he had a white cross, drawn in chalk, on the back of his coat. So the family relocated again, to County Louth, and his homeplace between Hackballscross and Inniskeen.
The Titanic showed that during the 1940s H & W specialised in building warships. We do not actually know what job Johnny had there.
My father was born in Belfast. At one point my grandmother was making two trips a day on the train to Éire, with tea secreted about the person of her infant child. Rationing was in place. This was just the start of his smuggling career. As a child he graduated to bringing across butter from South Armagh on a bicycle. But that is for another story.
Harland & Wolff 1861 – 2019
