At noon on Wednesday, 10th April 1912, the Titanic started from Southampton on her maiden voyage. Small enough was her experience of the sea before that day. Many hands had handled her; many tugs had fussed about her, pulling and pushing her this way and that as she was manoeuvred in the waters of Belfast Lough and taken out to the entrance to smell the sea. There she had been swung and her compasses adjusted.

If you enter Belfast Harbour early in the morning on the mail steamer from Fleetwood you will see far ahead of you a smudge of smoke. At first it is nothing but the apex of a great triangle formed by the heights on one side, the green wooded shores on the other, and the horizon astern.

Alexander Bell Filson Young (1876-1938) was a journalist, who published the first book about the sinking of the RMS Titanic, called Titanic, published in 1912 only 37 days after the sinking. He was also an essayist, war correspondent in the Boer War and World War I, a programmes advisor to the BBC, and the author of two novels. Beside his literary work, he was an organist and composer, and a pioneer of motoring and aviation.Taylah Mcdowell Alexander Bell Filson Young was born in Ireland in 1876, at Ballyeaston, County Antrim. He was the son of the Revd. William Young and Sarah Young (nee...