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SS Nomadic

Titanic and her sister-ship Olympic were too big to dock in Cherbourg, so in 1911 two tenders were built to transfer passengers, baggage and mail. SS Nomadic was the more luxurious and took first and second-class passengers, while SS Traffic took third class. During World War I they served as auxiliary military vessels then resumed as tenders for Olympic, until 1934 when Cherbourg harbour was enlarged. They saw further military service in World War II, after which the slow, accident-prone Traffic was scrapped. Nomadic was reprieved because bombed-out Cherbourg was again unable to receive large liners, so she tendered to the likes of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth before retiring in 1968. After a spell in Paris as a floating restaurant she looked destined for scrap, but a charitable trust brought her to Belfast for restoration.

Address: Hamilton Dock BT3 9DT
Getting there: in front of Titanic
Hours: Daily 11AM-4:30PM
Price: Same ticket as Titanic

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Listing from Wikivoyage: Belfast, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Updated 28 Sept 2026. Something wrong? Tell us.

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Titanic Belfast
For a century this was the "T-word" in Belfast, even more than the Troubles, an unwelcome reminder of a catastrophe reflecting badly on the city. This exhibition, opened in 2012 in a striking modern building, has revitalised a whole city quarter and rescued RMS Titanic as a source of local pride, for its construction and its crew. You progress through the metal-bashing boomtown of Victorian and Edwardian Belfast, through the design, construction by Harland & Wolff, fitting out and test sailings, to events of the first and final voyage. Titanic left Southampton on 10 April 1912, picked up passengers by tender from Cherbourg and Cork, and sailed out into the Atlantic. She left behind a confident Britain that daily expected news of Captain Scott's triumphant return from the South Pole. The museum shows excerpts from films about her sinking, gashed by an iceberg that calved from a Greenland glacier about the same day the ship was launched. One myth that is nixed is the 1997 James Cameron film treatment, where patrician British officers near-as-dammit hold the Irish 3rd-class passengers' heads underwater while the gilded rich are helped to safety and the band plays on. In truth one group had even worse survival than 3rd class, and that was the ship's crew, many of them Irish. The final part of the exhibition has submersible images of the wreck, which lies in two pieces 12,500 ft / 3800 m deep off Newfoundland.
Daily 10AM-5PMAdult £25, conc £22, child £11
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W5
Interactive science museum aimed at younger children. Booking essential.
Thu-Mon 10AM-6PMAdult £12, conc or child £10.50
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SSE Arena
Formerly Odyssey Pavilion
This complex contains a 12-screen cinema, the multi-use SSE Arena, conference facilities, W5 science museum (see above) and restaurants and bars.
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HMS Caroline
Royal Navy light cruiser built in 1914 and engaged in the Battle of Jutland. After the war Caroline had a spell in the Indian Ocean then was mothballed until 1924, when she came to Belfast as a training ship and navy headquarters.
Fri-Sun 10AM-4:30PMAdult £11, conc £10, child £9