Celebrating our ancestors’ work in key trades
THE PRIDE OF BELFAST
The liners Titanic (left) and Olympic under construction at Harland & Wolff’s shipyard in Queen’s Island, Belfast, c1910
In 1858 Edward James Harland, who had served an apprenticeship with engineer Robert Stephenson’s firm in Newcastle upon Tyne, bought a shipyard in Belfast that he was managing from its owner Robert Hickson. Three years later Harland’s former assistant Gustav Wilhelm Wolff became a partner in the company. Harland & Wolff grew rapidly helped by its founder’s innovative designs, and by 1899 employed 10,000 workers. Its success continued in the new century, when among countless other ships it built the enormous ocean liners Olympic, Titanic and Britannic for the White Star Line. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast holds the firm’s archive containing about 16,000 documents created between 1861 and 1987: nidirect.gov.uk/publications/introduction-harland-wolff-papers.