Titanic Memorial, City Hall, Donegall Square, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 5GS

Titanic Memorial, City Hall, Donegall Square, Belfast

This marble memorial by Sir Thomas Brock was erected in 1920 to commemorate the 1,490 victims of the Titanic disaster of April 1912. Originally commissioned in 1912, the work was postponed due to the First World War and was not completed until after 1918. The memorial was unveiled on 26 June 1920 by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord French. Brock, one of the country's leading sculptors and founding president of the Society of British Sculptors, was too ill to attend the ceremony and died two years later, making this one of his last completed works.

The memorial comprises a group of figures freely sculpted in white Carrara marble mounted on a grey granite base. The composition shows the female figure of Fame holding a laurel wreath, looking down upon two sea nymphs who support the body of a drowned man. The granite pedestal is chamfered and tapers to a square form, topped with simple moulding. Bronze heads of dolphins positioned at the front and back of the base originally served as drinking fountains, though these were altered during the second half of the twentieth century.

The inscription, originally rendered in gold leaf but later painted in brown enamel, is recorded on all four sides of the pedestal and lists the names of those who perished. It reads: "those gallant Belfast men...who lost their lives on the 15th of April 1912 by the foundering of the Belfast-built RMS Titanic through collision with an iceberg, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York" and concludes with "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

The memorial originally stood in the middle of the road in Donegall Square North but was relocated to the eastern side of the City Hall grounds in 1959–60. Cleaning and repair works were undertaken in 1992–93, with further conservation work carried out prior to the centenary commemoration in April 2012, at which time a memorial garden was opened on 15 April 2012. The memorial now forms part of an important group of high-quality memorials surrounding Belfast City Hall, complementing the building and contributing to the architectural character of Donegall Square.