IT might have been built in Belfast and come to grief after hitting an iceberg in the Atlantic, but the world’s most famous ship had more than a passing acquaintance with Worcestershire.

A new book by historian Andrew P.B. Lound reveals that 70 per cent of the interior of the Titanic, the unsinkable giant which duly sank on its maiden voyage to New York in 1912 with the loss of 1,600 lives, was made in the Midlands.

Its huge centre anchor, weighing nearly 16 tons, was manufactured by a firm from Cradley in north Worcestershire and at the time was dubbed “the biggest anchor in the world”.

Of course today county boundary changes have relocated Cradley, Dudley, Halesowen and other Black Country towns into the West Midlands, but when the Titanic was built they were very much part of the Black Pear county.

The ship had three anchors – port, starboard and centre – and several photographs exist of the massive centre anchor leaving the factory of anchor-makers Noah Hingley at Netherton en route to Dudley, where it was put on a train to make its way eventually to Belfast and the Harland and Wolff shipyard where the Titantic was being built.

Lound says the railway company initially planned to use 12 horses to pull the heavy cart carrying the anchor.

However, when the mighty load came to be moved, Hingley’s management refused to use them, maintaining the animals looked poor and their harness was dirty. It insisted on using eight of the company’s own horses instead.

This infuriated the railway man, who demanded his horses were also attached to the cart with the result that 20 horses eventually pulled the Titanic anchor through the streets of the Black Country.

When the firm’s founder Noah Hingley died in 1877 he was succeeded by his son Benjamin, who combined his business life with a considerable list of civic duties in Worcestershire.

He was a justice of the peace in Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Dudley, mayor of Dudley in 1887 and 1888, became High Sheriff of Worcestershire in 1900 and also deputy lieutenant of the county.

He was MP for North Worcestershire from 1885 until 1895 and made a baronet by Prime Minister Gladstone in 1893.

However, he retired from the firm in 1895 due to ill health and by the time Noah Hingley won the order for the Titanic anchor, the company was being run by Benjamin’s nephews George and Henry.

Despite its distance from the sea and the ship yards, the Midlands through its engineering talent has a long tradition of manufacturing for the shipping industry.

From elsewhere across the area, companies supplied buttons, whistles and guns for the Titanic’s officers and crews uniforms.

There was cutlery and tableware, beds and mattresses, fixtures and fittings and even “engaged” signs for the toilets.

All of which ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic.

RMS Titanic – Made in The Midlands, by Andrew P.B. Lound, is published by the History Press at £17.99