ORGANISATION AND SKILL: SHIPBUILDING IN BELFAST

Chronicle (Levin), 26 October 1946, Page 4

ORGANISATION AND SKILL: SHIPBUILDING IN BELFAST

. George

Gretton)

(By Dr

Northern Ireland is in a sense a frontier-land and its people are frontiersmen. It was there thac the Anglo-Saxon and the Celt met 350 years ago, and toaay you can nill see evidence of it. You see in :he streets of Belfast, for example, ;wo distinct types over and over again : the Anglo-Saxon, ruddyfaced and phlegmatic, the Celt, vivacious and dark, recalling an even earlier race of Mediterranean origin, yet often with strikingiy olue eyes. The contrast persisted in Northern Ireland because it is a fronaer country. At the oeginning of :he seventeenth century, it was settled by the English Government with English and Scottish "plantsrs",in order to secure order in [reland in.the face of endless rebellions of the Irish. Since the Irish were always dissatisfied with British rule (and at times thev did suffer grievous . wrongs) Ulster always remained the frontiex-. When, after a bitter strugg'le, Eire came into being as an independent state, Ulster clung resolvedly t.o its British connections and remained an intOgral part of the United Kingdom. Today the contrast between the predominantlv Protestant. North and the Catholic South fs as strong as ever, and the Catholic minority in Ulster still looks south for its loyalti^s and affinities. The bitter tension, whicli in the past has so often led to strife and even bloodshed, has les-'j sened somewhat, but the two races remain distinct, Nowhere is this so| clear as in Belfast, for there the j organising ability of the AngloSaxonfe, the engineTfihg genius j which has spahned the world in i the past hundred years, is ever'y- j where apparent, And the culmina- j tion of this industrial organisation j is seen in the magnificent ship- i yards maiply concentrated^in thej firm of Harland and Wolff. When I recently visited Harland ! and Wolff I was astonished at the] orderliness and purposefulness of i the place — it is, in fact, a wholel

town in itself, 300 acres in area, manned by 25,000 workers. Shipyards, even very efficient ones, are usualiy untidy, but Harland . and Wolff is remarkably clean and orderly in its layout. It is the most celf-contained shipyard in thfr world, and the biggest if we exclude plants like Kaysers, which are properly not shipyards but assembly yards. It can do anything to a ship, from the first drawing to installing equipment — the whaler, Balaena, which I saw, had everyohing down to electric meatsaws and scientific laboratories. The tonnage built is immense. During the war, Harland and Wolff produced half a miilion tons of merchant shipping — most of it special tonnage — and about 170 warships, includmg heavy cruisers and aircraft carriers, of which, incidentally, they are the biggest builders. All this despite heavy air attacks: the air raid damage claim submitted by Harland and Wolff and approved by the War Pamage Commission was the biggest single industrial claim submitted in Britain. The firm played an important part in the sensational expansion of-the Royal Canadian Navy during the war", for they built the cruiser, Ontario, the -aircraft carriers Magnificent, Powerful and Warrior, and the corvettes, Petulia and Arnprior for the Canadian Government. But the firm's narae is not built ion quantity of output: its outstanding activity is the construcItion of special high quality ton- ] nage which ealls for unusual techhiques. Harland and Wolff are the 'largest builders in the world of ;motor-ship tonnage, of refrigerated toniT,age, of motor passenger liners land cf motor cargo liners, . They [have built many of the most fam[ous ships of the last decades — the lOlympic and the Britannic are two ;examples. They have produced a I great • tonnage of tankers and S special food ships, and it * is 'c.haracteristic that during the war when they were called on to help solve the problem of transporting

armies across the sea* to liberate Surope, they produced the first three of a- special type of tank landing-craft, which became recog■.nised as' ihe Rolls-Royce among ■landing-craft; - a . . " 'For building ' 'this high quality specialised • tonnage, Harland and Wolff have special equipment, both human and material. Their plant is the most modern of.its kind in the world. They have 150 fioating cranes and about the -same number of standing cranes, including half a dozen of the most powerful ever built. They have also more welding space than any o+her firm, includ ing the biggest single welding shop in the world. More important still, they have a great wealth of human skill. Of their 25,091 workers, someLhing iike fifty p'er cent. are skilled — an extraordinarily high proportion — and' there is no single aspect of ship-building to which they can- . not bring their full complement of specialised skill. These men earn high wages and give value for their money. To many people in Britain, a great ship is the greatest of all creations of man's hand and brain. It was an exciting experience to see a scale model of a ship, from which the hulk is -drawn, on. the floor of the huge mould room in its exacfc dimensions, with every rivet . shown to a millimetre, and then go ■ out to the dock and see the ship itself three-quarters finished. -It was a revelation, too, to see with what passionate intensity every rivet was being driven. I had the feeling that this ship had been ereated as a great tangible contribution to the wealth of mankind. For years she would cross the oceans of the world with silent, unfailing efficiency. . The lives of Tiousands of men and women would be safe in her. She would link nations together, and her journeys would create well-being for millions. And all the time she would carry with her something of the spirit of .consciencious skill and ereative woT'kmanship of the British workmen who were fashioning her.