Harland & Wolff to work on cruise ships again

 The historic Belfast shipyard is to work on cruise ships again after winning maintenance contracts from Cunard and P&O Cruises. Harland and Wolff is best known for building the Titanic. It also built many other liners as well as the Canberra which was a troop ship in the Falklands War.

The shipyard will work on Cunard’s Queen Victoria and P&O’s Aurora. 

The city of Belfast in Northern Ireland is dominated by the two cranes, Samson and Goliath. I saw them Sept 2019. At that time, the company was looking for a buyer. Workers were outside with placards to save H & W.

Harland & Wolff was formed in 1861. Having built many of the world's ocean liners the demand for those ships declined after the Second World War, especially with the increase in air travel. The shipyard was modernised in the mid 1960s, a large dry dock was made and Samson and Goliath arrived. 

After years of problems, see Wikipedia, fast forward to 2018 when the then parent company, Fred Olsen, put Harland & Wolff up for sale. As there was no buyer by August 2019, the company announced that they would cease trading and entered formal administration. I was there on 7th September when the workers were campaigning to save the shipyard. On 1 October it was announced the yard had been bought. 

So this historic shipyard was saved and is now doing maintenance work on cruise ships. The two ships. Queen Victoria and Aurora will be inside the dry docks in May and June respectively. This is the first time a liner has been inside the dry docks for more than 20 years. And the Queen Vic will be the largest cruise ship to dry dock in any UK shipyard. See was constructed in Italy. I last saw her in the Amazon in Jan 2020 -

View of the Belfast dockyard from the cruise terminal - 

Another P&O ship. Azura, was in dock in Belfast from June - Dec 2021. She was just being stored there during the covid pandemic, waiting to return to service. I saw her there July 2021 -

And another view of Samson and Goliath (through a coach window!).

So it is good to know this historic shipyard is back in business and now maintaining cruise ships.