The Harland & Wolff (H&W) shipyard in Belfast is famous for having built the Titanic, the largest passenger ship of its time before it hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. But things have moved on since 1912. In recent weeks Samson, one of the two yellow gantry cranes that dominate Belfast’s skyline, has been straddling a giant oil processing vessel.
This is the Canadian-owned SeaRose, which is being upgraded by H&W in a contract worth more than £90m. The SeaRose is even larger than the Titanic, weighing in at 150,000 tonnes. The sight of a massive ship in Belfast harbour recalls the city’s glory days as a shipbuilding superpower. H&W collapsed into administration in 2019, but now the shipyard is back at the centre of British hopes to restore something of the industry’s past glories.
