Edward Tenner has a piece in The Atlantic about the Titanic's continued importance in Ireland as "an icon of the vanished glories of Belfast shipbuilding at its peak." This makes sense: when I was in Cambridge, I saw someone wearing a t-shirt that said,

The Titanic: Built by 15,000 Irishmen. Sunk by one Englishman.

As someone said, the past isn't a different country. It isn't even past.