In the months leading up to the 1912 Sinking of the Titanic, Lord Pirrie was questioned about the number of life boats aboard the Olympic-class ocean liners.

In Belfast he was, on other grounds, already a controversial figure: a Protestant employer associated as a leading Liberal with a policy of Home Rule for Ireland.

[4] Pirrie was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution before entering Harland and Wolff shipyard as a gentleman apprentice in 1862.

As well as overseeing the world's largest shipyard, Pirrie was elected Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1896, and was re-elected to the office as well as made an Irish Privy Counsellor the following year.

[6] He helped finance the Liberals in Ulster in the 1906 general election, and that same year, at the height of Harland and Wolff's success, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Pirrie, of the City of Belfast.

The letter P with a coronet above adorn metal gates and fence posts in the estate and previously owned lands.

In March 1924 Pirrie, his wife, and her sister sailed on a Royal Mail Steam Packet Company liner from Southampton on a business trip to South America.

They travelled overland from Buenos Aires to Chile, where they embarked aboard the Pacific Steam Navigation Company's Ebro.