Plans used to build Titanic to be made available to public

The technical plans and drawings used to build the Titanic are to be made available to the public.

They are among hundreds of thousands of ship plans and documents made widely accessible for the first time.

They are included in the Harland and Wolff ship plans archive.

It is stored at the Ulster Folk Museum and is being made available by National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI).

When did the Titanic sink?

More than 1500 people died when the Belfast-built Titanic sank on its maiden voyage in 1912.

The vessel struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank within hours.

The story of the sinking later became an Oscar-winning film starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet.

The wreck was discovered on the ocean floor in 1985 by a team led by Dr Robert Ballard.

It lies at a depth of around 2.5 miles (4km) and 370 miles (595km) off the coast on Newfoundland in Canada.

As well as plans for the Titanic, the archive also contains the plans for her sister ships Olympic and Britannic.

HMHS Britannic also met a tragic end, sunk by a German mine in 1916 while serving as a hospital ship during World War One.

But RMS Olympic served as a trans-Atlantic liner for the White Star line for over two decades before being scrapped in 1937.

Harland and Wolff began operations in 1861 and was once one of the world's largest shipyards.

Its archive contains hundreds of thousands of plans, drawings and documents detailing how ships were designed and built.

The archive is housed at the Cultra Collections Store at the Ulster Folk Museum.

A major project to catalogue the archive, called From Drawing Board to Slipway is also underway, with funding from the Archives Revealed grant programme.

In a statement, project archivist Siobhan McLaughlin said it would "unlock the hidden histories of Belfast's heritage in shipbuilding".

The director of collections at NMNI, William Blair, said that until now access to the archive had been restricted to academics and researchers.

"This project, however, shows how working with partners can broaden engagement and demonstrates our enhanced commitment to making our collections available to a wider audience than ever before," he said.

The project has also been welcomed by the director of operations at Navantia UK Harland and Wolff, Alex Haley.

It bought the historic shipyard in 2025.

The public will be able to access the ship plans online as well as making appointments to visit the plans and the Harland and Wolff collection.