"Janey Mac! Can't they do anything right?"

It was my friend, the man from Dublin, commenting on a news story emanating from Belfast.

What irked him was an article in The Irish News describing the blundering of a group in Belfast seeking to erect a plaque in honour of Thomas Andrews, the shipping architect who designed the ill fated Titanic, "the unsinkable ship", built in the Harland and Wolff shipyard, which sank after colliding in 1919 on her maiden voyage with the loss of 1,496 lives.

The story of the Titanic has been the subject of numerous books, and of at least two movie spectaculars, not to mention well documented efforts to seek out and photograph the ship's wreck on the ocean floor two miles under water.

Two major inquiries into the ship's sinking were held, one in England and the other in the United States, seeking to establish the cause or causes of the disaster. Excessive speed was the main finding of the British inquiry, while the American investigation focused on recommendations to avoid future tragedies at sea.

One principal factor determined by both inquiries was the inadequacy of the supposedly watertight bulkheads separating below deck compartments. These were not built sufficiently high to seal off inrushing waters from one compartment to another, leading inevitably to the ship's speedy plunge into the ocean depths.

Who was responsible for this fatal blunder has never been fully established. As the ship's principal architect, some laid the responsibility on Andrews, others on financiers anxious to cut costs. Ismay and J.P. Morgan were among their number.

Enter the Belfast group whose desire to pay homage to Andrews in 2002, by erecting a commemorative plaque in his honour ninety years after the ship's launch, has reopened the topic, not least by its own titanic blunder in failing to establish what they thought should have been the natural site for its placement, the home of the man himself while living in that city during the years of the Titanic's building.

The plaque, which was commissioned by the Ulster History Circle, was scheduled to be unveiled during a ceremony at what was believed to be Andrews' former home, No. 12 Windsor Avenue, Belfast.

But almost on the eve of the unveiling it was learned that all the street's houses had been renumbered in the 1920s, and the present No. 12 was not the No. 12 of Andrew's time.

According to The Irish News, the History Council was determined to display the plaque whether the original No. 12 was demolished or had it's use changed, and would not halt plans to commemorate the man they claim was responsible for "one of Belfast's greatest achievements".

"What's next?" asked the man from Dublin?

"Will they discover 'the Glorious Twelth' was actually 'the Glorious Thirteenth?' "

Cheap shot, from a man whose only experience of ships was second mate (aka deckhand) on a Guinness barge, up and down the Liffey.