P&O's Canberra; and Hamburg-America's SS Amerika of 1905. Harland and Wolff's official history, Shipbuilders to the World, was published in 1986.[4]
Today, the company is focused on supporting five sectors: Defence, Energy, Cruise & Ferry, Renewables and Commercial. It offers services including technical services, fabrication & construction, repair & maintenance, in-service support, conversion and decommissioning.
Harland & Wolff was formed in 1861 by Edward James Harland (1831–1895) and Hamburg-born Gustav Wilhelm Wolff (1834–1913) who came to the UK aged 14. In 1858 Harland, then general manager, bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island from his employer Robert Hickson.
After buying Hickson's shipyard, Harland made his assistant Wolff a partner in the company. Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe, Hamburg, who was heavily invested in the Bibby Line, and the first three ships that the newly incorporated shipyard built were for that line. Harland made a success of the business through several innovations, notably replacing the wooden upper decks with iron ones which increased the strength of the ships; and giving the hulls a flatter bottom and squarer cross section, which increased their capacity. Walter Henry Wilson became a partner of the company in 1874.[5]
In 1912, due primarily to increasing political instability in Ireland, the company acquired another shipyard at Govan in Glasgow, Scotland. It bought the former London & Glasgow Engineering & Iron Shipbuilding Co's Middleton and Govan New shipyards in Govan and Mackie & Thomson's Govan Old Yard, which had been owned by William Beardmore and Company. The three neighbouring yards were amalgamated and redeveloped to provide a total of seven building berths, a fitting-out basin and extensive workshops. Harland & Wolff specialised in building tankers and cargo ships at Govan.[6] The nearby shipyard of A. & J. Inglis was also purchased by Harland & Wolff in 1919, along with a stake in the company's primary steel supplier, David Colville & Sons. Harland & Wolff also established shipyards at Bootle in Liverpool,[7]North Woolwich in London[8] and Southampton.[9] However, these shipyards were all eventually closed, beginning in the early 1960s when the company opted to consolidate its operations in Belfast.
The war years
In the
monitors and cruisers, including the 15-inch gun armed "large light cruiser" HMS Glorious
.
In 1918, the company opened a new shipyard on the eastern side of the Musgrave Channel which was named the East Yard. This yard specialised in mass-produced ships of standard design developed in the First World War.
The shipyard was busy in the Second World War, building six aircraft carriers, two cruisers (including HMS Belfast) and 131 other naval ships; and repairing over 22,000 vessels. It also manufactured tanks and artillery components. It was in this period that the company's workforce peaked at around 35,000 people. However, many of the vessels built in this era were commissioned right at the end of the Second World War, as Harland and Wolff were focused on ship repair in the first three years of the war. The yard on Queen's Island was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe in April and May 1941 during the Belfast Blitz, causing considerable damage to the shipbuilding facilities and destroying the aircraft factory.
Post-war period
With the rise of the jet-powered airliner in the late 1950s, the demand for
P&O
in 1961.
In the 1960s, notable achievements for the yard included the tanker Myrina, which was the first
supertanker built in the UK and the largest vessel ever launched down a slipway, as it was in September 1967. In the same period the yard also built the semi-submersible drilling rig Sea Quest
which, due to its three-legged design, was launched down three parallel slipways. This was a first and only time this was ever done.
, enabling the shipyard to build much larger post-war merchant ships, including one of 333,000 tonnes.
The shipyard had a long-standing reputation as a Protestant closed shop, and in 1970, during
Catholic workers were expelled from their role.[15]
Continuing financial problems led to the company's
nationalisation, though not as part of British Shipbuilders, in 1977. In 1971, the Arrol Gantry complex, within which many ships were built until the early 1960s, was demolished. The nationalised company was sold by the British government in 1989 to a management/employee buy-out in partnership with the Norwegian shipping magnate Fred Olsen; this buy-out led to a new company called Harland & Wolff Holdings Plc.[16]
By this time, the number of people employed by the company had fallen to around 3,000.
For the next few years, Harland & Wolff specialised in building standard Suezmaxoil tankers, and has continued to concentrate on vessels for the offshore oil and gas industry. It has made some forays outside this market.
Faced with competitive pressures, Harland & Wolff sought to shift and broaden their portfolio, focusing less on shipbuilding and more on design and structural engineering, as well as ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for other projects to do with metal engineering and construction. This led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in Britain and also in the Republic of Ireland, such as the James Joyce Bridge and the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge, building on the success of its first foray into the civil engineering sector with the construction of the Foyle Bridge in the 1980s.
In 2003, Harland & Wolff's parent company sold 185 acres of surplus shipyard land and buildings to Harcourt Developments for £47 million. This is now known as the Titanic Quarter, and includes the £97 million Titanic Belfast visitor attraction.