Titanic Blood and Steel A City Divided Episode 1

In 1909, Dr. Mark Muir, a young metallurgist living in New York, persuades American tycoon J.P. Morgan to hire him for the biggest shipping construction project the world has ever seen: RMS Titanic, at the Harland & Wolff shipyard, in Belfast, Ireland. Muir received his doctorate at Imperial College in London, and previously had been chief metallurgist on HMS Dreadnought. The shipyard's visionary Chairman Lord Pirrie takes the young scientist under his wing, introducing him to Belfast's Protestant elite. Mark quickly catches the eye of the charming, albeit spoiled, daughter of a magnate: Kitty Carlton. But he is also intrigued by a very different woman: Sofia Silvestri, an Italian immigrant's daughter. Belfast, seen through Mark's eyes, is a city ridden with divisions of class and religion, from which, as a stranger, Mark should be far removed. But we soon discover that Mark is a man with a past mysteriously connected to the Catholic suburbs of Belfast.

Original airdate on History Channel May 13, 2012