Titanic was meant to be another success in a litany of past glories for the White Star Line. Weaving together images from the evocative albums of White Star crew member Philip Bell and Harland & Wolff engineer John Kempster, it is a revelatory portrait of this iconic vessel.

The work of two passionate photographers, Philip Bell and John Kempster, offer insights into what it meant to build, deploy and operate the great White Star ships in the era of Titanic. From the surging spectacle and excitement of a launch, to the lazy days of a long homeward haul from Australia, we see intimate details of life on-board or are asked to confront the ever-present dangers of an industrial shipyard. RMS Titanic was from the gene pool of an ever-strengthening fleet of vessels that eventually extended to a globe-girdling enterprise. These rare pictures, from a pair of extraordinary albums, provide her context.