That Belfast ever became a world shipbuilding centre is a matter of some surprise. Wooden vessels had been built on a small scale at Ritchie's yard on the north bank of the Lagan estuary but there was almost nobody in the town who knew anything about the construction of iron vessels. Besides, Ulster had no appreciable deposits of coal and only small quantities of iron ore, and the approaches to Belfast's quays were notoriously hazardous - vessels of any size had to moor three miles out in the lough at the Garmoyle Pool to wait for high tide. The establishment of a viable shipbuilding concern was due entirely to chance and remarkable individual enterprise.
Credit goes first to the Belfast Harbour Commissioners (some members of which had been United Irishmen or were sons of United Irishmen, and steered clear of politics) who conducted an energetic and tenacious campaign to win parliamentary approval to raise funds to make a "cut" to enable vessels to come up at all stages of the tide. The Victoria Channel was opened in 1849 and the commissioners then made vigorous attempts to persuade entrepreneurs to set up on Queen's Island, then a heap of dredged-up mud on the right bank of the Lagan, left by the contractor, William Dargan.
Meanwhile, a large iron mill had been set up by Liverpool businessmen in Eliza Street, on the assumption that coal would be found on Lord Downshire's estate. No coal was forthcoming and the concern was sold to Robert Hickson who decided to build iron ships on the island. Since Hickson hardly knew one end of a boat from another, he advertised for a manager and appointed the 23-year-old Edward Harland, who had learned his trade with George Stephenson & Son on the Tyne and then helped to design and build 11 iron steamers at Govan on the Upper Clyde.
On arriving in Belfast, Harland at once showed the ruthless determination he was to display all his life: he cut wages, banned smoking, and brought in shipwrights from the Clyde when the men went on strike. In October 1885 Harland successfully completed the Khersonese, and the following year launched the 1,387-ton Circassian, the largest ship to have been built in Ireland. Soon after the Ulster Bank foreclosed on the ironworks and Hickson sold Harland the Queen's Island yard for £5,000.
It is at this point that luck was on Belfast's side: Harland wanted to relocate in the Mersey but Liverpool City Council turned him down because of his "youth and inexperience". Harland was backed by Gustav Schwabe, a partner in John Bibby and Sons of Liverpool, and had already accepted Schwabe's nephew, Gustav Wolff, as his personal assistant. Most of the vessels built in Belfast were to orders from the Bibby Line. Disparagingly called "Bibby coffins", these vessels caused a sensation in the shipping world because of their revolutionary design "of increased length without an increase in the beam". As Harland explained: "The hull of the ship was converted into a box girder of immensely increased strength." The characteristic square bilge and flat underside soon became known in the trade as the "Belfast bottom".
Business was brisk during the American Civil War when the Confederate states were eager to buy fast steamers capable of running the Union blockade. In 1869, Schwabe joined with Thomas Ismay to create the White Star Line to compete with the well-established Cunard and Inman Lines of the profitable North Atlantic run. Completely re-equipped, the yard at Queen's Island built the Oceanic in 1870. This can be regarded as the first modern liner, with accommodation which was extended along the full width of the vessel. First-class passengers, placed amidships, away from roll and vibration, found their berths and lounges "as comfortable as a Swiss hotel".
Belfast was the fastest-growing urban centre in the United Kingdom in the 19th century. The city would never have become the third most important port in the United Kingdom - one of the greatest industrial and engineering centres in the western world - without Harland & Wolff. The first employees had been Protestants and Harland's recruitment methods hardly changed until the late 1970s. Men "spoke" for their sons, nephews, cousins and friends to have them taken on as apprentices. It was a hostile environment for Catholics: only 16.9 per cent of shipyard workers were Catholic in 1871 and most of these were low-paid labourers. This did not trouble either Harland or Wolff who both became Unionist MPs. Periodic sectarian clashes, notably in 1864, 1872 and 1886, were accompanied by forcible expulsions of Catholics from the yard.
In the first half of the 19th century most immigrants to Belfast were from west of the Bann and by the 1830s a third of the citizens were Catholics. The emergence of shipbuilding changed that pattern: incomers thereafter arrived mainly from rural Antrim and Down and the proportion of Protestants in the city rose to more than 75 per cent by the beginning of the 20th century. The Catholic enclave of Short Strand (originally a settlement of cotton handloom weavers) became surrounded by a great Protestant sea in east Belfast, populated by shipyard workers and employees in the largest ropeworks in the world (set up largely by Gustav Wolff). In the northwest of the city, a high proportion of men living on the Shankill Road also found employment on Queen's Island.
In January 1899 Harland and Wolff launched the largest manmade moving object constructed in the 19th century, the Oceanic, the second great liner of that name. By now the firm controlled the largest shipyard in the world, regularly launching the biggest vessels and exceeding the output of any other yard. The company's success and dependence on overseas raw materials and orders powerfully buttressed Unionist arguments opposing Home Rule during the crisis years before the first World War.
In retrospect, Harland & Wolff's troubles began with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. White Star, the yard's main customer, never fully recovered its former prestige. At the time, however, the demand for liners was brisk and then followed the insatiable demands of the Allied war machine. By 1919 the firm's workforce had risen to 30,000 men. The blow did not take effect until the winter of 1920-21.
W.J. Pirrie had presided over Harland & Wolff during its greatest years. This flamboyant Belfast man had kept the yard in the forefront of diesel marine engine-making. In 1918, Lloyd George appointed him controller-general of merchant shipbuilding. He was autocratic and secretive, however, and in his confidence for the future had dangerously over-extended the company's capacity. When Pirrie died in 1924, his successor was Baron Kylsant of Carmarthen, chairman of the Royal Mail group. Kylsant was appalled when he looked at the firm's books and used all his artistry to hide the truth from the business world: he used methods which eventually earned him a year in prison for fraud in 1931.
The company from this time on was heavily dependent on government support. In fact the yard was more successful in winning orders than other UK yards (in 1929 it launched both the biggest tonnage in the world and the biggest ship, the Britannic) but the problem was that Britain was losing its dominance in this field.
On March 16th, 1960 Dame Pattie Menzies, wife of the Australian prime minister, welcomed by the RUC band playing Waltzing Matilda, broke a bottle of Australian red wine on the bows of Canberra and the 45,270-ton P&O liner entered Belfast Lough. It was the end of an era. Never again would Belfast build an ocean liner. The current lay-offs will not be as dislocating as those of the 1930s and 1960s but many Protestants will ruefully see the demise of the yard as yet another political blow.
In 1974 the Harland and Wolff workforce played a pivotal role in pulling down the power-sharing executive. Now that loyalist muscle has been lost. Even if the order had been won for Belfast, and the yard comfortably saved, that leverage would not be possible: Northern Ireland now has some of the most draconian fair employment legislation in the world.
Jonathan Bardon is the author of A History of Ulster, Blackstaff 1992, and Belfast: A Century, Blackstaff 1999