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Harland & Wolff is a British shipbuilding and fabrication company headquartered in London with sites in Belfast, Arnish, Appledore and Methil. It specialises in ship repair, shipbuilding and offshore construction. Harland & Wolff is famous for having built the majority of the ocean liners for the White Star Line, including Olympic-class trio – RMS Olympic, RMS Titanic and HMHS Britannic. Outside of White Star Line, other ships that have been built include the Royal Navy's HMS Belfast; Royal Mail Line's Andes; Shaw, Savill & Albion's Southern Cross; Union-Castle's RMS Pendennis Castle; 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. 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. In 2022, the company was awarded a major naval contract as part of Team Resolute (alongside Navantia UK and BMT), to deliver the Royal Fleet Auxiliary's three new Fleet Solid Support vessels. Early history 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. When Harland died in 1895, William James Pirrie became the chairman of the company and remained so until his death in 1924. Thomas Andrews, Pirrie's nephew, became the general manager and head of the draughting department in 1907. It was in this period that the company built Olympic and the two other ships in her class, Titanic and Britannic, between 1909 and 1914. It commissioned Sir William Arrol & Co. to construct a massive twin slipway and gantry structure for the project. 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. 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, North Woolwich in London and Southampton. 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 First World War, Harland and Wolff built Abercrombie-class 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. During the 1920s, Catholic workers, Socialists and labour activists were routinely expelled from their jobs in the shipyard: Similar actions had occurred in June 1898 and July, 1912. See The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922). The company started an aircraft manufacturing subsidiary with Short Brothers, called Short & Harland Limited in 1936. Its first order was for 189 Handley Page Hereford bombers built under licence from Handley Page for the Royal Air Force. In the Second World War, this factory built Short Stirling bombers as the Hereford was removed from service. 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 ocean liners declined. This, coupled with competition from Japan, led to difficulties for the British shipbuilding industry. The last liner that the company launched was MV Arlanza for Royal Mail Line in 1960; the last liner completed was SS Canberra 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. In the mid-1960s, the Geddes Committee recommended that the British government advance loans and subsidies to British shipyards to modernise production methods and shipyard infrastructure to preserve jobs. A major modernisation programme at the shipyard was undertaken, centred on the creation of a large construction graving dock serviced by two Krupp Goliath cranes, the iconic Samson and Goliath, 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 the Troubles, 500 Catholic workers were expelled from their role. 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. T.... Discover the Robert O Harland popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Robert O Harland books.