Richard A. Krebes
Member
Just when did the "No Pope" myth first appear? Anybody know?
Richard K.
Richard K.
The No Pope myth
- Thread starter Richard A. Krebes
- Start date
Richard A. Krebes
Member
I say! Can anybody help me with this question?
Thanks!
Richard K.
Thanks!
Richard K.
Hello Richard,
I can't give you a specific answer but comments such as NO POPE were common among the protestant workforce at Harland and Wolff. Indeed there is photographic evidence for this.
There is a picture of the Titanic on the stocks just prior to launch. On the fencing alongside the gantry is graffiti which reads NO POPE HERE. I know you can't see it clearly on this scan but it is there, believe me. The Southampton Maritime Museum has a huge blow-up of this picture and the words are clearly visible.
I can't give you a specific answer but comments such as NO POPE were common among the protestant workforce at Harland and Wolff. Indeed there is photographic evidence for this.
There is a picture of the Titanic on the stocks just prior to launch. On the fencing alongside the gantry is graffiti which reads NO POPE HERE. I know you can't see it clearly on this scan but it is there, believe me. The Southampton Maritime Museum has a huge blow-up of this picture and the words are clearly visible.
Here's a blow up, not much use but it's the best I can do.
With digital enhancement
Charles Provost
Member
Freaky.
Richard A. Krebes
Member
WHAT IN THE NAME OF JESSE JAMES AT NORTHFIELD...
Hm! Isn't it a fact that "3909 04" was NOT a number assigned to the Titanic when she was on the ways?
If so, then perhaps it was merely a shipyard rumor that got started and inspired someone to paint "No Pope Here!" on the fence.
Or a God-fearing soul felt building the T. was sacrelegious, and painted "No Pope Here!" on the fence. Then some smart-aleck saw it and came up with the "3909 04" canard.
Or, finally, somebody wrote "No Pope Here!" on the photo after hearing the "No Pope" tall tale so "evidence" of it could be produced.
Thoughts anyone?
Richard K.
Hm! Isn't it a fact that "3909 04" was NOT a number assigned to the Titanic when she was on the ways?
If so, then perhaps it was merely a shipyard rumor that got started and inspired someone to paint "No Pope Here!" on the fence.
Or a God-fearing soul felt building the T. was sacrelegious, and painted "No Pope Here!" on the fence. Then some smart-aleck saw it and came up with the "3909 04" canard.
Or, finally, somebody wrote "No Pope Here!" on the photo after hearing the "No Pope" tall tale so "evidence" of it could be produced.
Thoughts anyone?
Richard K.
Inger Sheil
Member
There were certainly anti-Catholic sentiments expressed at Harland & Wolff, and at least one account has them scrawled onto the Titanic while she was being constructed. Thomas Andrews - he of the Belfast Protestant elite - certainly goes up a few notches in my estimation for the way in which he was said to have dealt with the graffitti. He orded it removed, with a comment on how much it disgusted him.
Senan Molony
Member
It's a bit like hanging out a sign saying "No milk today, thank you," isn't it...
It's hardly as if someone was delivering Popes to Harland and Wolff...
Funnily enough a Pope HAS visited a shipyard! John Paul II went to the old Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, did he not, on one of his tours of Poland after Lech and the lads saw off communism.
I believe the workers had big signs up saying:
"Pope Here."
But returning to H&W for a moment:
In the lead-up to 1912 (the Home Rule (for Ireland) Bill passed in the Commons in the same week as the Titanic disaster occurred) the sectarian furnaces were being stoked as part of the burning political agenda.
In the same vein, the Unionist slogan of the time was that Home Rule was 'Rome Rule' - a reference to the industrial North East being swallowed up by the Catholic hinterland which was naturally taking its every cue from Ol' Red Socks in the Vatican...
It's hardly as if someone was delivering Popes to Harland and Wolff...
Funnily enough a Pope HAS visited a shipyard! John Paul II went to the old Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, did he not, on one of his tours of Poland after Lech and the lads saw off communism.
I believe the workers had big signs up saying:
"Pope Here."
But returning to H&W for a moment:
In the lead-up to 1912 (the Home Rule (for Ireland) Bill passed in the Commons in the same week as the Titanic disaster occurred) the sectarian furnaces were being stoked as part of the burning political agenda.
In the same vein, the Unionist slogan of the time was that Home Rule was 'Rome Rule' - a reference to the industrial North East being swallowed up by the Catholic hinterland which was naturally taking its every cue from Ol' Red Socks in the Vatican...
Inger Sheil
Member
Senan -
Did you catch the photo of Pirrie and others reproduced on page 123 of Tim Pat Coogan and George Morrison's splendid new book 'The Irish Civil War'? The caption that goes along with it reads:
This photograph, taken after the first meeting of the Northern Parliament (7 June 1921) shows the character of the right-wing, oligarchic Conservative political structure that was helped into power in Northern Ireland by the Tory establishment in England. The chief supporters of this new regime were (left to right in photograph) The Marquis of Londonderry, Lady Craig, Captain Herbert Dixon, Lord Pirrie, Lady Pirrie, and Sir James Craig. Only Sir Edward Wilson and Sir Henry Wilson were absent, the latter because he expected to be ordering troops into Southern Ireland.
On the 9 April 1912 two days before Asquith's Home Rule Bill was to be put to the House of Commons, Bonar Law and other Unionist leaders held a giant rally in Belfast to oppose Home Rule - 'You hold the pass, the pass for the Empire' he told those gathered. Tim Pat Coogan reports the reaction to the meeting:
The gathering of 9 April was quickly followed up with social organization and action. The 12th of July saw what euphemists today would call 'ethnic cleansing'; 2,000 Catholic workmen were driven out of the Belfast shipyards, in spite of the fact that the chairman of Harland & Wolff, Lord Pirrie, was a Liberal and a supporter of Home Rule for Ireland.
Of course, Home Rule was deferred with the outbreak of WWI...and eventually the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916 and men like Michael Collins would take matters into their own hands.
Yeats' hope, expressed in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, would not be fulfilled:
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said
Did you catch the photo of Pirrie and others reproduced on page 123 of Tim Pat Coogan and George Morrison's splendid new book 'The Irish Civil War'? The caption that goes along with it reads:
This photograph, taken after the first meeting of the Northern Parliament (7 June 1921) shows the character of the right-wing, oligarchic Conservative political structure that was helped into power in Northern Ireland by the Tory establishment in England. The chief supporters of this new regime were (left to right in photograph) The Marquis of Londonderry, Lady Craig, Captain Herbert Dixon, Lord Pirrie, Lady Pirrie, and Sir James Craig. Only Sir Edward Wilson and Sir Henry Wilson were absent, the latter because he expected to be ordering troops into Southern Ireland.
On the 9 April 1912 two days before Asquith's Home Rule Bill was to be put to the House of Commons, Bonar Law and other Unionist leaders held a giant rally in Belfast to oppose Home Rule - 'You hold the pass, the pass for the Empire' he told those gathered. Tim Pat Coogan reports the reaction to the meeting:
The gathering of 9 April was quickly followed up with social organization and action. The 12th of July saw what euphemists today would call 'ethnic cleansing'; 2,000 Catholic workmen were driven out of the Belfast shipyards, in spite of the fact that the chairman of Harland & Wolff, Lord Pirrie, was a Liberal and a supporter of Home Rule for Ireland.
Of course, Home Rule was deferred with the outbreak of WWI...and eventually the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916 and men like Michael Collins would take matters into their own hands.
Yeats' hope, expressed in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, would not be fulfilled:
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said
Hello,
I believe the story about the number 3909 04 was a kind of fairy tale isn't it. With very much imagination one could read NO POPE when you turn back the sentence.
But there was wrote THE HELL WITH THE POPE on the hull of Titanic. An English journalist, Mr Gibbs (later Sir Gibbs) told this in his reports when he visited H&W.
Regards,
Rolf
I believe the story about the number 3909 04 was a kind of fairy tale isn't it. With very much imagination one could read NO POPE when you turn back the sentence.
But there was wrote THE HELL WITH THE POPE on the hull of Titanic. An English journalist, Mr Gibbs (later Sir Gibbs) told this in his reports when he visited H&W.
Regards,
Rolf
Sam Brannigan
Member
While producing A Night To Remember in the 1950's the producer Bill McQuitty received a letter that read:
"Dear Sir,
In your request for information about the Titanic, I wonder if you were told that the Orangemen employed in the Belfast shipyard cursed the pope with every rivet they put in the Titanic and her registered number 390904 when read from the back of the paper it was put on read NO POPE. With this so called unsinkable ship the curse of almighty God fell on her and I wonder what they said when they heard the band played Nearer My God To Thee as she sank"
My dear old grandmother who was born in February 1911 and has just celebrated her 90th birthday still believes the no pope story to be true although it has been officially disproven. Another example, perhaps, of the sectarian divisions in the North of Ireland?
Regards
Sam
"Dear Sir,
In your request for information about the Titanic, I wonder if you were told that the Orangemen employed in the Belfast shipyard cursed the pope with every rivet they put in the Titanic and her registered number 390904 when read from the back of the paper it was put on read NO POPE. With this so called unsinkable ship the curse of almighty God fell on her and I wonder what they said when they heard the band played Nearer My God To Thee as she sank"
My dear old grandmother who was born in February 1911 and has just celebrated her 90th birthday still believes the no pope story to be true although it has been officially disproven. Another example, perhaps, of the sectarian divisions in the North of Ireland?
Regards
Sam
Beverly J. Crowder
Member
That is a rather interesting rendition of why the Titanic sank. Are there other curses out there?
Beverly
Beverly
Senan Molony
Member
The Pope did manage to get on board the Titanic, of course, in a manner of speaking.
Archie Butt was carrying back an official reply from His Holiness to a letter delivered to the Pontiff by Butt from President Taft.
The parchment and seal of the crossed keys of St Peter DID get on board that vessel, despite the Northerner Orangemen's best efforts!
Waving a yellow and white flag,
Southerner Senan
(ouch! I can feel the Belfast confetti already!)
Archie Butt was carrying back an official reply from His Holiness to a letter delivered to the Pontiff by Butt from President Taft.
The parchment and seal of the crossed keys of St Peter DID get on board that vessel, despite the Northerner Orangemen's best efforts!
Waving a yellow and white flag,
Southerner Senan
(ouch! I can feel the Belfast confetti already!)
Inger Sheil
Member
Hoping there's some green in that flag you're waving, Sen...
That's one thing I love about the Southeners - the Tricolour is truly inclusive: Orange (obvious), White: Peace, Green: Obvious.
Now forgive me while I subside while muttering about blood staining the wattle.
That's one thing I love about the Southeners - the Tricolour is truly inclusive: Orange (obvious), White: Peace, Green: Obvious.
Now forgive me while I subside while muttering about blood staining the wattle.
