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It was the shipyard that had built the Titanic . The Harland and Wolff (H & W) of Belfast, Northern Ireland, is now in the process of sinking. The yard stopped its activity Monday afternoon August 5 after more than a century of toil and meetings with history.
It is a company more than a hundred and fifty years old whose destiny has more than once been matched with that of history.
The Harland and Wolff begins to make legend with a certain Titanic , a spectacular liner that came out of his yard in 1912 before crashing into an iceberg and creating a global shock wave.
Fifty years later, the shipyard's trajectory closely matches that of a Northern Ireland conflict between Protestants and Catholics. The Greek billionaire Onassis then wants to invest in the company but it is feared that his arrival favors Catholics and his offer is refused.
In the decade that followed, the company struggled to cope with competition from Asia and Germany and suffered the full brunt of the second oil shock that cancels orders unpublished supertankers.
And when the 1980s arrive, the UK is ruled by a merciless Margaret Thatcher on the North Irish issues and the industry at half mast, which will refuse any financial bail to the Belfast shipyard.
Since then, after many waves of redundancies and a buyout by a Norwegian group, the Harland and Wolff has sailed from uncertainty to uncertainty for today to cease trading.