Primary school pupils took to the waves to come face-to-face with the fascinating history of the RMS Titanic.

Pupils from Lanercost Primary School, near Brampton, embarked on a whirlwind trip to Belfast and back to visit the city’s Titanic museum.

As the city in which the ill-fated ocean liner was built, the Belfast Titanic museum is the largest in the world dedicated to the ship, which sank after striking an iceberg in 1912.

Year four, five and six pupils from Lanercost school - who have been learning about the Titanic as part of their term topic on megastructures - were led on their seafaring expedition by headteacher Alison Clarricoats.

“We want the children to have the opportunity to experience a broad and balanced curriculum, and experiences like this really underline what is taught in the classroom,” Mrs Clarricoats said.

“It was a great way of consolidating all the learning that we’ve been doing.

“We have a local link to the Titanic through Joseph Bell, who was the chief engineer for the ship - he was from the nearby village of Farlam.”

Before the Belfast trip, the children visited the village’s memorial paying tribute to Joseph Bell - his body was never recovered, as he died trying desperately to save the sinking ship.

“We had a service at the church and the children wrote prayers for Joseph Bell,” Mrs Clarricoats said.

The Belfast trip began with a ferry ride across the Irish sea, which Mrs Clarricoats felt was an important experience to help underline what Titanic passengers would have felt.

“The sensation of being on the sea, surrounded by nothing but water, it’s not an easy one to imagine without experiencing it first-hand,” she said.

Mrs Clarricoats added that for many of the pupils it was their first time on a ship, yet they were “excited rather than daunted”.

Once at the museum, the first activity they took part in was titled ‘abandon ship’ - exploring how to survive at sea following a shipwreck.

“They had 15 different items, they had to work out how they would prioritise those items before they were rescued.”

Mrs Clarricoats said that the museum did a fantastic job capturing the story of the Titanic, from its construction to its sinking.

“The museum explores the background to how Belfast became such an important shipbuilding city, and how the industrial revolution brought the money into Belfast,” she said.

“They did a great job recreating what the sights and sounds would have been like of the actual construction of the Titanic.”

In addition, the museum helped Mrs Clarricoats and Lanercost teachers Miss Turnbull and Mrs Reed explore with the pupils more complex themes like social class.

“There was an exploration of how the passengers were split into different classes, which was a very interesting issue to explore,” Mrs Clarricoats said.

“It looked at how many from each class survived. It broke down the different survival rates not just between classes but between men and women as well. That was very powerful.

“There was also an exploration of all the different nationalities of the passengers on board.

“The children were really engaged with all of this - I was surprised actually by just how much they were.

“They came armed with a lot of knowledge, as we’ve been studying it for the past term, so I think they were able to take on board the more poignant aspects of the Titanic story as well as the more dramatic side.”

The following day, the Lanercost school group paid a visit to the Ulster museum, which features both historically important artwork and a celebration of northern Ireland’s more recent creative endeavours, such as Game of Thrones.

Mrs Clarricoats added that the trip to Belfast was a useful opportunity to compare the city with London, which the school visited in March.

“It was interesting to underline with the pupils that they are both capital cities but both very different places,” she said.