Harland and Wolff

The Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast was once the largest in the world.

Founded by Edward Harland in 1861, then joined by Gustav Wolff, the yard has built many famous ships including the Titanic and HMS Belfast.

At its peak during the Second World War, the shipyard employed 31,000 people who built over 170 ships, from corvettes to aircraft carriers.

The shipyard’s two giant cranes, Samson and Goliath, have dominated the Belfast skyline since the early 1970s. They’re a permanent reminder to the people of Belfast of the city’s engineering giant. There was a national outcry at the suggestion they be moved and they are now listed as historic monuments.

The Harland and Wolff shipyard has the world’s biggest dry dock, a mighty 556m by 93m

Today the company has reinvented itself for a new industrial age, as it now makes any large-scale metal engineering construction including offshore wind farms, oil rigs, and bridges. And sometimes they even build and repair ships.

See http://www.discoverychannel.co.uk/machines_and_engineering/industrialrevelations/buildings/harland_wolff/index.shtml