The
SS NOMADIC was built in 1911, on the slipway next door to the
TITANIC at Harland & Wolff in Belfast, as the tender vessel to be used
in transporting first and second class passengers out from Cherbourg to the
Olympic Class Liners.
She ferried 147 passengers out to TITANIC on her ill fated maiden voyage. Such
immortal names as Molly Brown ("The Unsinkable Molly Brown"), millionaires such
as Benjamin Guggenheim and his mistress and many others.
NOMADIC served the British Government as a troopship during
WWI and made a heroic escape across the channel at the fall of France in WW II
carrying hundreds of French troops to freedom.
She had an incredible career of well over 50 years as a tender, even carrying
passengers out to the QUEEN MARY in the 1960's.
Eventually in the early 1970's she was retired and became a floating restaurant
on the River Seine, Paris, opposite the Eiffel Tower.
Falling on hard times she was impounded by the French authorities, and put up
for sale as scrap.
However, following a huge internet campaign, a group of
people formed the Nomadic Preservation Society raising over £40,000 and with the
help of a £100,000 grant from the Department of Strategic Development (DSD) in
Northern Ireland, managed to save the vessel from the scrap yard torch.
She has been moved to Belfast, where a limited amount of work has been done and
an official Government Trust (The Nomadic Charitable trust - a registered
charity) was appointed to oversee her restoration.
Now however the money has run out and help is urgently needed to preserve this
hugely important vessel.
Some of the things which make this vessel unique:-
-
She ferried many famous
people out to the Titanic on her last voyage
-
She is THE LAST
White Star Line vessel in existence (The Company that Owned the Titanic)
-
She has had an incredible
life story, which deserves to be told and which has many links to
Lancashire
-
From the Titanic legend,
Captain Arthur H Rostron, who was Captain of the "Carpathia" and who
rescued the Titanic's survivors, was born in Astley Bridge, Bolton.
-
Also from the Titanic
legend, Captain Stanley Lord ,of the "Californian", was the ship said to
have done nothing to help Titanic, and to have been in sight of her
while she sank. He was also born in Bolton.
-
Perhaps the most
famous Titanic link in the Lancashire area is that Of Wallace Henry
Hartley, Titanic's orchestra leader, who as most people know, in his
attempts to prevent panic, kept his band playing to the bitter end, and
came from, and was buried in Colne (Near Burnley)
The Nomadic Preservation Society Web Site:
www.nomadicpreservationsociety.co.uk/
The Nomadic Charitable Trust Website:
www.nomadicbelfast.com
