By Julian O'Neill BBC Newsline reporter

A distress signal had been sounding from the SS Nomadic long before the government saved it from the scrapheap. For years it was left to rot in a French dockyard.

The Nomadic has returned to Belfast

Today the Nomadic is half the boat it once was. Its looks have changed drastically since its heyday when it carried aristocrats out to board the Titanic at Cherbourg.

In Le Havre, where it departed last Wednesday, the last floating vessel of the famous White Star Line had been located amongst shipwrecks decaying on the quayside.

Weeds grew from its deck and rusting plates of iron covered up half the portholes.

Its appearance was more like a flat-topped barge.

The upper deck, as seen in old photographs, had been sliced off when Nomadic went to Le Havre from Paris, where it had seen out its days as a floating restaurant beside the Eiffel Tower.

Boarding Nomadic, it was hard to whiff the romance.

Experts said Nomadic was in good condition despite its 95-year age. Yet the enormity of the renovation job was clear.

But look hard enough and you could glimpse the potential.

Part of the interior remains as it was when it left Harland and Wolff.

The centrepiece is a wooden staircase, a little battered but retaining a hint of luxury.

The Nomadic took passengers out to the Titanic

A member of the French Titanic Society had told me that running your hand down the rail was "to touch the ghosts of the doomed liner".

Elsewhere, there are dark wood beams across ceilings and decorative panelling on some of the walls.

A bar is in remarkably good condition beneath a thick layer of dust and there are one or two original decorative doors.

The entrance area leads to what would have been the Paris restaurant room, a huge space but where it seems everything original has been stripped out and replaced by 80s chic.

To the rear is a small theatre with rows of seats, again a modern addition.

Another flight of stairs leads below deck. Here, under the tarnished portholes, are benches where second class passengers would have sat during the journey out to Titanic and her sister ship, Olympic.

The ship no longer has an engine and whether Nomadic becomes a working vessel again will be a decision partly based on costs.

The SS Nomadic was brought back to Belfast on a barge

The government, after paying �170,000 for Nomadic at auction in January and spending the same again to get it home, has established a trust to raise restoration funds.

Estimates put a return to sea as a type of pleasure craft at �7m.

A cheaper option, at �2m, would see Nomadic become a museum piece.

Either way, a lot is riding on the Nomadic project because of the boost the government believes it could give tourism.