Qualla: Harland & Wolff

Harland & Wolff: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit August Schwerdfeger, CC BY 4.0. Two yellow gantry cranes called Samson and Goliath stand on the eastern shore of Belfast Lough, each rising 96 metres into the sky, visible from forty miles away on a clear day. They were built by Krupp in 1969 and 1974 to lift the largest oil tankers ever assembled in Britain. They are still there. They do not lift much these days, but they remain the largest moving objects in Northern Ireland and the most photographed silhouette in the city. They mark the spot where, between 1909 and 1912, three teams of riveters working in twelve-hour shifts built the largest ship in the world and then her two sisters. The ship was the RMS Titanic. The yard was Harland & Wolff.

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Image: August Schwerdfeger | CC BY 4.0

Harland & Wolff: Two Men, a Yard, and a Welsh Investor

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Clarke at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Edward Harland was an English-born shipbuilder who arrived in Belfast as the general manager of a small Queen's Island yard owned by Robert Hickson. In 1858 he bought the yard outright. Three years later, in 1861, he made his German-born assistant Gustav Wilhelm Wolff a partner. ...

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Image: Peter Clarke at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Harland & Wolff: Olympic, Titanic, Britannic

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Stavros1 at English Wikipedia., Public domain. The White Star Line was in a race with Cunard. Cunard had the Mauretania and Lusitania, the fastest liners on the Atlantic. White Star decided to compete on size and luxury instead. Between 1909 and 1914, Harland & Wolff built three nearly-identical Olympic-class liners under a v...

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Image: The original uploader was Stavros1 at English Wikipedia. | Public domain

Harland & Wolff: The Protestant Closed Shop

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Stavros1 at English Wikipedia., Public domain. There is a harder story under all the heritage. Harland & Wolff drew most of its workforce from the Protestant Shankill Road and east Belfast districts, and Catholics who tried to work there were never made welcome. In July 1912, in June 1898, and again during the loyalist riots ...

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Image: The original uploader was Stavros1 at English Wikipedia. | Public domain

Harland & Wolff: The Blitz and the Long Decline

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. In April and May 1941, the Luftwaffe bombed Belfast. The Belfast Blitz killed around 1,100 people in two nights of attack - one of the worst civilian death tolls per capita anywhere in the UK during the war. The shipyard was a primary target. The yard's aircraft factory, where Sh...

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Image: Public domain

Harland & Wolff: The Spanish Era Begins

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Stavros1 at English Wikipedia., Public domain. InfraStrata, a small London energy firm, picked up the Belfast yard for £6 million in October 2019. They renamed themselves Harland & Wolff Group Holdings, acquired the dormant Appledore yard in Devon and the BiFab yards at Methil and Arnish in Scotland, and tried to turn the com...

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Image: The original uploader was Stavros1 at English Wikipedia. | Public domain