This brings me back and is a little sad too ,I served my time in the yard ,my father worked there and my grandfather was a ships painter after the first world war.I worked on the Ulidia which was the last supertanker built in H and W. As mentioned, the skills that these men had are lost forever. Thankyou for bringing back fond memories
@Janet McWilliamsJanet McWilliams 32 years of religious and political hatred, violence, murder in Northern Ireland and you have learned nothing, grow up and join us in reality. Religion, look what it has done in the world, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim or Hindu who cares. I am a non believer and have not set foot in a church since I was 12 years old, how about you, still holding the rosary beads? if so ask your priest about the rape, torture and murder of innocent children especially in the Republic of Ireland all carried out by the fine examples of human excrement who masquerade as Catholic clergy. Religion in its finest hour .... the protestant side are not squeaky clean either, religion keep it all! My original comment had no political or religious connotations whatsoever, a reflection on the past , nothing more, most of the people featured are long since departed. Sad that your mind is focused on the dark side of life and that you read something of religious or political significance!
@Janet McWilliams Janet McWilliams You certainly seem a very balanced person ie. you have a chip on both shoulders! I could mention the west Belfast bakery that did not employ protestants, Mackies Engineering who manufactured loom machines and gradually forced all of their protestant workforce out after 1969 or Millfield technical college who openly favoured their Catholic students and discouraged 'others' from attending, there are many other examples and we could go tit for tat forever but history is exactly that, history, we don't live in it. Unfortunately the Irish bog mentality will always shine through and its no wonder the Irish were the subject of ridicule and the butt of countless jokes for many years, you are a classic example! However not politically correct anymore some would say "happy days gone forever". So do a little research and reading, travel a lot and see how other people live and have left your 'kind' far behind in their wake then who knows you might not sound like a pathetic uneducated and bitter catholic bigot!
In 1968 I was a ropelayer in Belfast Ropeworks, which was a subsidury company od Harland and Wolff shipbuilders. The ropeworks was then the largest of its kind in the world, although its machinery was Early Victorian - and antiquated, with most ot it operated from leather belts that stretched up to twenty feet to a central steel "axle", which in turn was driven by water wheel fed by the Connswater River alongside. Most of the ropes were of hemp, but I was one of two men selected to operate a brand new electrically driven layer especially designed for syntheitc ropes. Hemp contains an oil which literally seeped into the operators' clothing. Unlike hemp ropes made elsewhere in the world, those made in Belfast had a "secret" formula of oil added, and which made our ropes unique and longer-lasting. Thankfully, synthetics were a lot cleaner and slightly less dangerous, as many men had lost a hand or fingers on the old machines that had little-to-no safeguards. The first synthetic ropes I made (on a job lasting several months) were for the brand new QE2 Liner. Working entirely alone at nights, I had to churn out two-three reels per night, and any extra would give me a small bonus. Unfortunately, it became a regular headache when the machine broke down or an unseen knot jamed in the die; synthetic ropes require high-quality splicing that could take a hefty slice of time - time that cost money! However, I managed to produce about 90% of the complete order before I chose to resign and become a full-time police officer! Nonetheless, I had made my tiny mark in history as one of the first ever ropelayers to produce synthetic ropes, and to make them for a world-famous liner.
@@bushratbeachbum I/We really had no idea; all hemp went through several processes before it eventually got to the rope-layer. Like any quality manufacturing company, Belfast Ropework Company had its "Trade Secrets" known only to a few. The only things I/we knew was that it was colour-less, and after a day of making the rope, our clothes were pretty much saturated and had to be washed. It did have a specific, pungent smell - not unpleasant, and not that dissimilar to a garage mechanic. We suspected some form of soap and tallow, or even vegetable oil,but whatever it was, our ropes apparently outlasted Indian and Italian hemp by years! The irony was that our new machines for synthetic rope where Italian!
Coolo, thanks for the reply. Much appreciated! I was wondering if it may have been a form of hemp oil or something. I've not had a chance to work with hemp and find it a fascinating plant. It's a shame it stopped being used so widely, it seems to cover most of our needs and groes fast! Madness!
@@bushratbeachbum Like any other similar plant such as jute and flax, hemp has its own oil. It is claimed that Northern Ireland had the best such plants in the world, and certainly held the market share for many years - perhaps due to the peat marshes. Flax for example had some 21 different processes before it went into production materials. There is an excellent video on TH-cam about the production precesses in Northern ireland - fascinating! Sadly these products have been overtaken by synthetics.
I would like to mention here a great man, Ted McCormack, a great friend of my recently deceased father Maurice Bradshaw. Ted worked in the drawing office in H&W and was involved in making the scale model of the Canberra. These scale models being so precise that the measurements were taken from them to make the ribs and plates for the real ship. I remember him telling me of seeing HMS Eagle, which was being built when he arrived to start his apprenticeship, of being in a Stirling bomber in Shorts when he had to deliver a message to the test pilot and of many more great stories.
Superb. True craftsmen. My friends father worked there all his life and my cousin worked there in the 1980s. Not a hard hat or orange vest in sight and the job still got done.
The craftsmanship and effort put into making ships such as these is amazing. East Belfast had the finest shipubuilders in the world. Hopefully one day we might have them again.
This has brought back so many memories of shipbuilding having started as an apprentice plater at age 15. It was a small shipyard in east yorkshire and I worked in the mould loft too. Great days with hard talented guys.
I understand the economies of scale with the large shipping companies, bulk carriers and container ships. However large luxury liners are being built in Finland with higher wages than N.I. H&W built some oof the finest ships on the seas. I will always have a soft spot for those big yellow cranes as my grandda worked there at one time.
Great video and wonderful memories - our local primary school would take us to launchings if the weather wasn't too inclement. The last ship I saw being launched was the Canberra in 1964 before I moved on to post-primary education. My father and brother both worked in the Yard.
answered your comment above, John, and then seen this. Coming from Holywood, I watched the Southern Cross heading out on her maiden voyage; saw the very first oil rig platform launched (Sea Quest); watched the Canberra being built and launched; and yes, Esso Ulidia oil tanker. I watched most of them from hillside near Knochnagoney, then walked happily back to Holywood!
Just watched the video. I have not seen the top getting removed from the rivits before. I was thinking when watching, does that not weaken the rivit considerably? It appeared to me that the 'smooth' top appeared to be relatively thin, I thought they would require more meat on them.
@@saxglend9439 Irrelevant comment, much the same way that Northern Ireland will soon be obsolete, ejected from the island like a splinter from a fingertip to become a footnote in the history of Ireland.
You worked there on the Bideford Dolphin? I was there also, we loved Belfast all of us, two of my colleagues got a girl there, one marrying, everyone travelled around in Ireland when they got the chance, also, the locals was so nice and charming, so yes, we all loved that project and to stay in Belfast
Hey up my friend been thinking of you recently, wondering if you'd posted the H@W machine shop film you'd mentioned, tonight this popped up so had to watch nice to see your comment
@@bfc3057 I do not agree. Whether serious historian or not, there is relevance. To discard the original post as you did was unnecessary and rather arrogant. Ones interest is quite literally that, not what another dictates it to be.
@@bfc3057 It is a cool part of history, and does it mean anything ? Nope, but even so it is a realization of passed time. But reading your previous answers i am rather sure that one can’t explain that in terms of anything that’s familiar to you.
brillant find, the riveting is a lot different to what was on show in Titanic Belfast. Ships now are built in large prefabricated blocks, this approach of building the skeleton and plating it all at the same time is how they built titanic, surprised they still done it this way in the 50s
Nothing stays the same , I now see Korean shipbuilding is under siege from cheap China and Japan with its devalued currency , Japan stole shipbuilding from Britain , and their shipbuilding was stole by Korea which is now being stolen by China .
@@johngormley2192 In the eternal triangle (Good, Fast, Cheap) 'good' and 'fast' always lose out to cheap; mainly because clients can not tell the difference between the three legs of the other eternal triangle Price, Cost & Value.
Well. Harland and Wolff is near collapse, most if not all manufacturing has gone overseas? What's left? Belfast and Cyldebank remind me of the rust belt over in the United States. :-(
@@mikemancini313 I currently live in Glasgow and I completely agree. It is my dream to someday fund a shipyard of my own to compete with the Chinese and foreign markets not only to honor the yards that have come before but to realize the skill in areas like Govan and lower unemployment in those areas. There has to be a way to make it profitable.
@@carltrotter7622 I wish you good luck. It's pathetic what Britain's ship building industry looks like now compared to the China, Japan, Italy, France, or even Germany. I hope one day Britain can produce ships to the extent that they used to.
@@ralphraffles1394 Harland and Wolff has been losing enormous amounts of money since the 1960s! The Canberra was a novel ship built at that shipyard that was a huge loss for the shipyard. Every ship after the Canberra has lost enormous amounts of money for the shipyard. Not only did that shipyard go near-broke in 1966 but slowly the shipyard has lost the value it used to have. Harland and Wolff is nothing more than a depressing wasteland now. Harland Wolff has not made a profit since 2015. I can imagine if things don't change, that shipyard will end up looking like John Brown shipyard in Clydebank. (And you people wonder why Scotland is facing so many financial difficulties.) British shipbuilding is absolutely pathetic these days. I'm sorry to come off as rude about it, but that industry has been run straight into the ground.
I worked at Harland & Woolf in 1997, they had a souvenir shop we visited, selling among other things pictures of the Titanic, I asked the young girl behind the counter if they were proud of the Titanic, she said yes, and I said, it sank, I also remember we where sitting in our barracks and could see the locals sticking their arms in our windows stealing our working clothes of our nails while we was looking at them, I was told it was some kind of fashion in Belfast to wear coveralls with company logos on the back The oilrig was taken outside Scotland for testing and we flew out with helikopter each day, each day we had to be weighed, and out on the rig the cleaning ladies complained to us they found big stones all over the rig, they did not understand, it turned out, the locals stole coveralls on the rig, I was told they had stolen 400 coveralls, and the locals took the stones out of the bags to take the coveralls back to Belfast, but, the thing is, I do not remember we ever was weighed when we went back in the evening
Those were good strong 💪 Irish ships. What happened to those ships had no reflection upon the shipyard nor the workers. It was a combination of bad weather mixed with human error 💔
Should never have lost these industries. A failure of management and government strategic thinking. We were ahead with the infrastructure in place and yet other countries from a start point of nothing crush everything.
Have you worked at a shipyard? In the winter for example? People are not motivated anymore, it is usually also low pay, it is cold, windy, long distances, dusty, the smell from wet paint is absolutely horrible, and it can be dangerous environments, if people have a choice, they do not choose a ship yard, unfortunately
did work in 10th scale office we were not classed as draughtsmen. do on fermicra tables then `rip` up plywood, called `boards` then give to `marker off`s`. 10th scale outfit loft, HW. On `big table` used different colours per DECK. END off
I’ve heard stories of Catholic workers at H&W being thrown into the water at the shipyard, while Protestant workers onshore hurled iron bolts at them while they attempted to swim to safety. Did this really happen?
@@progpuss So you go around wearing a bright yellow vest everywhere you go? You make your family wear them to the supermarket? Your kids have to wear them to school? How about hard hats in the playground?
One question; Considering H&W is based in N.Ireland which is Protestant & Catholic. "was it a mixed work force 🤔" because the history of H&W I hear is that the Nationalist people got a real hard time getting a job & " if they did it wasn't for long before they suffered sectarian abuse sometimes worse , 😳
mr Snankill Mr The yard was based in east Belfast and many of the workers lived there and could walk or cycle to work. Many Roman Catholics fearing sectarianism didn't want to cross the bridge to go there. Unless uniquely qualified many jobs were subject to the petty nepotism of family recommendation, and apprentices or laborers didn't bunk off because it would harm the person recommending them. It was a vicious cycle keeping employment local and although the management may have gotten the blame for not taking on Roman Catholics they really wouldn't have cared so long as they did their work but there again neither did they want sectarian riots in the yard after some idiot politician made a speech, as Northern Ireland then was about divide and conquer, and the working man bore the brunt of the trouble. I went to a Technical School in N.I. with Christians, Roman Catholics and others, and every one of us who wanted to get a trade got one back then, so not every employer cared about religion, just your potential. As for the state of industry, I remember my last job as a fabricator. Among other things we made bespoke spacers for a German factory beside us, they cancelled the contract because Spain could provide them cheaper than we could buy the metal, God bless what became the EU. Then the German factory left because it didn't need to be based in the UK to trade there, so it went back home, our friends and colleagues of the EU.
Over the years a few bombs were detonated inside the yard,IRA tried to topple one of the cranes,there were a couple of bombs on the fort Victoria,and if I remember right an IRA member who planted the la Mon hotel bomb was working in the yard and they tried to assassinate him. In the early nineties a welder was shot and murdered on the job.
It's interesting for me because my father was born 1949 on Trafalgar Street Belfast, about a minutes walk from the shipyard, his father was a dock worker, he became a plumber my brother is a plumber I qualified as a carpenter, so the craftsmenship lives on 🤗
@@andrewmorton395 Nothing went wrong. Shipbuilding progressed - no more rivets, now welding. Rivets were obsolete when this was filmed. Computer Aided Design replaced pencils. And the people who build ships today are every bit as skilled as the tradesmen in this film. And far more versatile. There is no future in buggy whip making or renting VHS tapes. Change is good.
And as always, the people who actually built the thing have to stand on the sidelines while people who never lift a finger in their lives, swan past...
TP Did some of these people wrong you in a previous life? You seem to be very bitter, did your mother not show you affection or love you enough. This video is about history, nothing sinister!
Lost my Father earlier this year..He was a Riveter/boiler maker in Hull.Would be employed for a day and then layed off when the job was finished..All piece work and they had to pay for the compressed air to knock the rivets down!..But work was plentiful back then with the fishing industry.When that disappeared the city went into terminal decline and my Dad had to travel the country for work...Usually in the steel works.
The car industry all but gone,the shipbuilding industry gone,the computer industry gone,the aircraft industry now a sub contractor to the French & Germans, everything just about gone. And what do our Universities churn out in ever greater numbers.....graduates in sociology,racial awareness,human studies,football science,equal opportunities,political history,economics etc,etc,etc.the list is endless.Just as long as you steer clear of any subject that requires brains and will help get this nation out of the mess it has got itself into,but then just look at the morons we have in charge of us.The traditional two party system is and has been since 1945 not fit for purpose
My family on mum's side all worked here. My uncle Billy Irvine was in the time of this film. My Grandda was a riveter during war years. Very special thanks for sharing
Incredible . We can marvel at modern tech but what these guys achieved is stunning . Great that we have this archive . (BTW The music was chosen well.)
Great pieces of film showing specialised riveting techniques including flushing off in way of the rubbing strake and a Caulker back-gouging a welded deck seam.
Amazing, and you know as you watch it'll only have a 20+ year life span, after all that craftsmanship and employment. She was beached and scrapped near Karachi, Pakistan in 1983.
The size of the funnel intrigues me. The engine ( is that a two stroke diesel , ie with a blower?)was slow revving , I cant imagine the exhaust was was at high velocity , though no doubt pretty hot and voluminous. Did the funnel also house some kind of heat exchange unit for pre'heating inlet air or heating fuel or perhaps water ?
All main diesel engine built in Belfast up to 1960 were Opposed Piston 2 stroke under B &W license. Earlier engines were Double Acting 2 stroke opposed piston (3 pistons /cyl ) then later came Exhaust Valve 2 strokes turbo charged. They are direct drive 115 rpm, & direct reversing. Engine exhaust generates steam.
The selection of music is marvelous however Barber’s Serenade for Strings was not really evocative fir the launching, whereas the Nimrod that followed the launch would have been more appropriate. Thanks for your efforts.
Passenger liners are a very profitable ship to build...gone now.. Oil tankers are just steel and machinery. Military vessels often need years of steady work to complete. All ship construction was outdoors then and subject to weather.
This brings me back and is a little sad too ,I served my time in the yard ,my father worked there and my grandfather was a ships painter after the first world war.I worked on the Ulidia which was the last supertanker built in H and W. As mentioned, the skills that these men had are lost forever. Thankyou for bringing back fond memories
Rikk Wake up western world you mean found
@T D ?
@Janet McWilliams Janet McWilliams Shocking name to call anybody and you are quite wrong on both counts
@Janet McWilliamsJanet McWilliams 32 years of religious and political hatred, violence, murder in Northern Ireland and you have learned nothing, grow up and join us in reality. Religion, look what it has done in the world, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim or Hindu who cares. I am a non believer and have not set foot in a church since I was 12 years old, how about you, still holding the rosary beads? if so ask your priest about the rape, torture and murder of innocent children especially in the Republic of Ireland all carried out by the fine examples of human excrement who masquerade as Catholic clergy. Religion in its finest hour .... the protestant side are not squeaky clean either, religion keep it all! My original comment had no political or religious connotations whatsoever, a reflection on the past , nothing more, most of the people featured are long since departed. Sad that your mind is focused on the dark side of life and that you read something of religious or political significance!
@Janet McWilliams Janet McWilliams You certainly seem a very balanced person ie. you have a chip on both shoulders! I could mention the west Belfast bakery that did not employ protestants, Mackies Engineering who manufactured loom machines and gradually forced all of their protestant workforce out after 1969 or Millfield technical college who openly favoured their Catholic students and discouraged 'others' from attending, there are many other examples and we could go tit for tat forever but history is exactly that, history, we don't live in it. Unfortunately the Irish bog mentality will always shine through and its no wonder the Irish were the subject of ridicule and the butt of countless jokes for many years, you are a classic example! However not politically correct anymore some would say "happy days gone forever". So do a little research and reading, travel a lot and see how other people live and have left your 'kind' far behind in their wake then who knows you might not sound like a pathetic uneducated and bitter catholic bigot!
In 1968 I was a ropelayer in Belfast Ropeworks, which was a subsidury company od Harland and Wolff shipbuilders. The ropeworks was then the largest of its kind in the world, although its machinery was Early Victorian - and antiquated, with most ot it operated from leather belts that stretched up to twenty feet to a central steel "axle", which in turn was driven by water wheel fed by the Connswater River alongside. Most of the ropes were of hemp, but I was one of two men selected to operate a brand new electrically driven layer especially designed for syntheitc ropes. Hemp contains an oil which literally seeped into the operators' clothing. Unlike hemp ropes made elsewhere in the world, those made in Belfast had a "secret" formula of oil added, and which made our ropes unique and longer-lasting. Thankfully, synthetics were a lot cleaner and slightly less dangerous, as many men had lost a hand or fingers on the old machines that had little-to-no safeguards.
The first synthetic ropes I made (on a job lasting several months) were for the brand new QE2 Liner. Working entirely alone at nights, I had to churn out two-three reels per night, and any extra would give me a small bonus. Unfortunately, it became a regular headache when the machine broke down or an unseen knot jamed in the die; synthetic ropes require high-quality splicing that could take a hefty slice of time - time that cost money! However, I managed to produce about 90% of the complete order before I chose to resign and become a full-time police officer! Nonetheless, I had made my tiny mark in history as one of the first ever ropelayers to produce synthetic ropes, and to make them for a world-famous liner.
Lovely to hear these memories I worked in the accountant's office until the McCleery L'Aime takeover and left in 1972!
Great story! Cheers!
What was the oil used for the hemp ropes?
@@bushratbeachbum I/We really had no idea; all hemp went through several processes before it eventually got to the rope-layer. Like any quality manufacturing company, Belfast Ropework Company had its "Trade Secrets" known only to a few. The only things I/we knew was that it was colour-less, and after a day of making the rope, our clothes were pretty much saturated and had to be washed. It did have a specific, pungent smell - not unpleasant, and not that dissimilar to a garage mechanic. We suspected some form of soap and tallow, or even vegetable oil,but whatever it was, our ropes apparently outlasted Indian and Italian hemp by years! The irony was that our new machines for synthetic rope where Italian!
Coolo, thanks for the reply. Much appreciated!
I was wondering if it may have been a form of hemp oil or something.
I've not had a chance to work with hemp and find it a fascinating plant.
It's a shame it stopped being used so widely, it seems to cover most of our needs and groes fast! Madness!
@@bushratbeachbum Like any other similar plant such as jute and flax, hemp has its own oil. It is claimed that Northern Ireland had the best such plants in the world, and certainly held the market share for many years - perhaps due to the peat marshes. Flax for example had some 21 different processes before it went into production materials. There is an excellent video on TH-cam about the production precesses in Northern ireland - fascinating! Sadly these products have been overtaken by synthetics.
My uncle was a welder there from the mid '40s to the mid' 80s- one job for a lifetime
I’m always amazed when an experienced welder chalks a long arc off handedly and it’s perfect!
Brilliant. Best thing I’ve watched in ages. I’m from Belfast. The drawing office is now a grand hotel lounge.
We had our wedding in the drawing office. 2018.. loved it. Beautiful wonderful history.
I would like to mention here a great man, Ted McCormack, a great friend of my recently deceased father Maurice Bradshaw. Ted worked in the drawing office in H&W and was involved in making the scale model of the Canberra. These scale models being so precise that the measurements were taken from them to make the ribs and plates for the real ship. I remember him telling me of seeing HMS Eagle, which was being built when he arrived to start his apprenticeship, of being in a Stirling bomber in Shorts when he had to deliver a message to the test pilot and of many more great stories.
I new the modle makers
3 men
Great to see these old skills being deployed and tradesmen of all sorts.
Superb. True craftsmen. My friends father worked there all his life and my cousin worked there in the 1980s. Not a hard hat or orange vest in sight and the job still got done.
Stephen Smith with a lot of injuries and fatalities!
@@subscriberswithnoVideos-yx3jf Thats how heavy industry was in those days.
The craftsmanship and effort put into making ships such as these is amazing. East Belfast had the finest shipubuilders in the world. Hopefully one day we might have them again.
When you see the finished hull just remember every bolt was tightened by hand and every drop of paint was hand painted too!
Every rivet.
It's amazing how they produced the ships. People in todays world would never understand "hard" work
Mathew the bolts were to aligne the metal plates this ship is of rivet construction
Magnificent, workmanship like no other. Bravo.
This has brought back so many memories of shipbuilding having started as an apprentice plater at age 15. It was a small shipyard in east yorkshire and I worked in the mould loft too. Great days with hard talented guys.
great film hey steve
Priceless footage
2200 ships like this lost during WWII, and 35,000 lives at sea perished. The cost of effort was immense. This is just ONE.
Had to beat those fuckin Krauts
@@2113rushFor what reason?
I understand the economies of scale with the large shipping companies, bulk carriers and container ships. However large luxury liners are being built in Finland with higher wages than N.I. H&W built some oof the finest ships on the seas. I will always have a soft spot for those big yellow cranes as my grandda worked there at one time.
My granda worked there too. He was chased off the end of the dock every 12th. Sure it was all in good fun.
Great video and wonderful memories - our local primary school would take us to launchings if the weather wasn't too inclement. The last ship I saw being launched was the Canberra in 1964 before I moved on to post-primary education. My father and brother both worked in the Yard.
answered your comment above, John, and then seen this. Coming from Holywood, I watched the Southern Cross heading out on her maiden voyage; saw the very first oil rig platform launched (Sea Quest); watched the Canberra being built and launched; and yes, Esso Ulidia oil tanker. I watched most of them from hillside near Knochnagoney, then walked happily back to Holywood!
Should have said 1960 for launch of the Canberra - too many birthdays for accurate recall!@@reggriffiths5769
Allways wondered how they did those flat head rivets .quite a skill
Flushing off I just learned
Just watched the video. I have not seen the top getting removed from the rivits before. I was thinking when watching, does that not weaken the rivit considerably? It appeared to me that the 'smooth' top appeared to be relatively thin, I thought they would require more meat on them.
@@stewartross1233 They were countersunk so no
Unbelievable skills and hard work.
It’s amazing to see how good we used to be at making stuff! Could we do that again? I’d like to think so. A great vid.Thank you.
What an absolute gem............Thank you
great footage from back in the day,i came from a shipyard family,cammell laird in birkenhead,my dad, brother and myself all caulkers.
Yep true craftmanship at its best especially the massive joinery workshop. 👍👍
Craftsmanship all over the joint in this film mate but do agree the joinery was pretty cool
Back when Ireland still had industry and could make things.
Northern Ireland
@@saxglend9439 Nope; Ireland. H&W long predates that vile state
@@TheShepTV Lervish 👽
@@saxglend9439 Irrelevant comment, much the same way that Northern Ireland will soon be obsolete, ejected from the island like a splinter from a fingertip to become a footnote in the history of Ireland.
@@kevocos Chrisum
Really enjoyed the film. We were a Yard family, My grandad served his time on Titanic, as did his brothers, my dad worked in the yard as did I.
The shed at 3:40, which 1 of sheds was it do u know?
@stephen turner Dick! 🤣
Most of my family worked in the shipyard
Very few Catholics employed there. Mostly Orangemen!
Excellent video thank you for uploading it
I worked there in 97, stayed in “heartbreak hotel” had a blast!!!
You worked there on the Bideford Dolphin? I was there also, we loved Belfast all of us, two of my colleagues got a girl there, one marrying, everyone travelled around in Ireland when they got the chance, also, the locals was so nice and charming, so yes, we all loved that project and to stay in Belfast
gold!, thanks for sharing
Hey up my friend been thinking of you recently, wondering if you'd posted the H@W machine shop film you'd mentioned, tonight this popped up so had to watch nice to see your comment
The riveters and corkers would almost certainly become deaf from the noise not to mention white finger vibration and many other hazards.
A riveter had HUGE biceps.
Just 22 years later, ripped to bits on Gadani Beach..... tragic.
Have dads old logs, he worked on this ship
Masters at work.
Has anybody realised that this ship, that was built in Titanic’s slipway was launched exactly 50 years later to the day after her :-)
@@bfc3057 yes, as a point of history.
@@bfc3057 I do not agree. Whether serious historian or not, there is relevance. To discard the original post as you did was unnecessary and rather arrogant. Ones interest is quite literally that, not what another dictates it to be.
@@bfc3057 whatever😴
Yep
@@bfc3057 It is a cool part of history, and does it mean anything ? Nope, but even so it is a realization of passed time. But reading your previous answers i am rather sure that one can’t explain that in terms of anything that’s familiar to you.
Superb video!
brillant find, the riveting is a lot different to what was on show in Titanic Belfast. Ships now are built in large prefabricated blocks, this approach of building the skeleton and plating it all at the same time is how they built titanic, surprised they still done it this way in the 50s
Great film. The plebs and workers were kept well back from the suits and ladies, in true British fashion.......
When the Towers were made of wood and the Men were made of Steel
Nothing stays the same , I now see Korean shipbuilding is under siege from cheap China and Japan with its devalued currency , Japan stole shipbuilding from Britain , and their shipbuilding was stole by Korea which is now being stolen by China .
I did hear a tale that the South Korean shipbuilding industry was initiated by Austin&Pikersgill, off the Tyne, just to annoy the zips!
Exactly the same with automotive, home appliance, clothing, carpet industry’s! But those countries are still shit holes & we are still thriving 👍
When someone works cheaper there goes the work.
@@johngormley2192 In the eternal triangle (Good, Fast, Cheap) 'good' and 'fast' always lose out to cheap; mainly because clients can not tell the difference between the three legs of the other eternal triangle Price, Cost & Value.
done a lot of lofting, also the bandsaw is a WADKIN, I had one exactly the same, she's rusting on the inside from day one
Its hard to believe that ships were ever made in Belfast these days , anything for that matter .
Well. Harland and Wolff is near collapse, most if not all manufacturing has gone overseas? What's left? Belfast and Cyldebank remind me of the rust belt over in the United States. :-(
@@mikemancini313 I currently live in Glasgow and I completely agree. It is my dream to someday fund a shipyard of my own to compete with the Chinese and foreign markets not only to honor the yards that have come before but to realize the skill in areas like Govan and lower unemployment in those areas.
There has to be a way to make it profitable.
@@carltrotter7622 I wish you good luck. It's pathetic what Britain's ship building industry looks like now compared to the China, Japan, Italy, France, or even Germany. I hope one day Britain can produce ships to the extent that they used to.
@@mikemancini313 Harlands is making a comeback these days. Harlands Appledore, Devon has just been bought.
@@ralphraffles1394 Harland and Wolff has been losing enormous amounts of money since the 1960s! The Canberra was a novel ship built at that shipyard that was a huge loss for the shipyard. Every ship after the Canberra has lost enormous amounts of money for the shipyard. Not only did that shipyard go near-broke in 1966 but slowly the shipyard has lost the value it used to have. Harland and Wolff is nothing more than a depressing wasteland now. Harland Wolff has not made a profit since 2015. I can imagine if things don't change, that shipyard will end up looking like John Brown shipyard in Clydebank. (And you people wonder why Scotland is facing so many financial difficulties.) British shipbuilding is absolutely pathetic these days. I'm sorry to come off as rude about it, but that industry has been run straight into the ground.
With a fair wind H and W back in business!
I worked at Harland & Woolf in 1997, they had a souvenir shop we visited, selling among other things pictures of the Titanic, I asked the young girl behind the counter if they were proud of the Titanic, she said yes, and I said, it sank, I also remember we where sitting in our barracks and could see the locals sticking their arms in our windows stealing our working clothes of our nails while we was looking at them, I was told it was some kind of fashion in Belfast to wear coveralls with company logos on the back
The oilrig was taken outside Scotland for testing and we flew out with helikopter each day, each day we had to be weighed, and out on the rig the cleaning ladies complained to us they found big stones all over the rig, they did not understand, it turned out, the locals stole coveralls on the rig, I was told they had stolen 400 coveralls, and the locals took the stones out of the bags to take the coveralls back to Belfast, but, the thing is, I do not remember we ever was weighed when we went back in the evening
WTF are you on ?
On ships prior to First World War, the hot rivets were mostly slag, which is why the rivets popped so easily on The Titanic.
Titanic didn't sink though
amazing footage
The history of the "John Brown" yard in Scotland was the greatest "wrong" in history!
Incredible footage. How did all this disappear?
Beware, man without cap at 20:51. What was he thinking of?
Those were good strong 💪 Irish ships. What happened to those ships had no reflection upon the shipyard nor the workers. It was a combination of bad weather mixed with human error 💔
the token catholic
fantastic and all glenmen
great video enjoyed
Man in the video : nailing a weird shape of thin wood planks to floor
Me : ooooo, that must be one that called "lofting"
Thanks to Leo the sailor then
Love the Brits!
I wonder if the ship Port St. Lawrence in this film is still around or it has been retired and scrapped?
Nicholas Maude scrapped in 1983 at Gadani Beach - Pakistan
My father spent most of his career at sea working for port line the owner of this ship, they later became part of Cunard line.
Elvis Costello sings a beautiful song about the shipyards. “Ship building”
1960 a welder in America made about $3& 50cents an hour.I worked with them on natural gas pipelines.
Tradesmen that are worth their weight in gold, that no one wants to pay for any more !
Don't remind me
3:40..any1 know which dhed thst was? AFS or web line maybe
0:35 wasn't that the white star line drawing offices
Should never have lost these industries. A failure of management and government strategic thinking. We were ahead with the infrastructure in place and yet other countries from a start point of nothing crush everything.
Have you worked at a shipyard? In the winter for example? People are not motivated anymore, it is usually also low pay, it is cold, windy, long distances, dusty, the smell from wet paint is absolutely horrible, and it can be dangerous environments, if people have a choice, they do not choose a ship yard, unfortunately
music choice is dire ,, but a great video .
Not the music from platoon?
did work in 10th scale office we were not classed as draughtsmen. do on fermicra tables then `rip` up plywood, called `boards` then give to `marker off`s`. 10th scale outfit loft, HW. On `big table` used different colours per DECK. END off
Do we have composers names for this most wonderful music?
No sorry
Its called the Adagio for strings by Samuel Barber, it was also used in the movie Platoon
Rikk Wake up western world yes indeed, I very haunting piece of music!
The middle bit was Nimrod from Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations...
Just think two ships being made in the time it takes to make one, one of wood (templates) and the other of steel.
I am crying just to think about Titanic.
I’ve heard stories of Catholic workers at H&W being thrown into the water at the shipyard, while Protestant workers onshore hurled iron bolts at them while they attempted to swim to safety. Did this really happen?
I’d be surprised if that happened to be honest. Hard workin highly skilled guys doin that?
Yes it did.
Was around the time of Ireland's political Home Rule. It wasn't just in the shipyard. Never during 50-60s
Oh my gawd! All those poor people getting killed by the hundreds because they weren't wearing high visibility dork-vests!
What a stupid comment , every life matters , if it was your family who lost someone because of a safety issue you wouldnt be so smug.
@@progpuss So you go around wearing a bright yellow vest everywhere you go? You make your family wear them to the supermarket? Your kids have to wear them to school? How about hard hats in the playground?
kocham tytanika
thay are fixing offshore oil rigs now I think
They nearly collapsed last year. It's pitiful.
@@mikemancini313 i believe they where bought by InfraStrata
they are currently hiring people now must be doing something right
One question;
Considering H&W is based in N.Ireland which is Protestant & Catholic.
"was it a mixed work force 🤔" because the history of H&W I hear is that the Nationalist people got a real hard time getting a job & " if they did it wasn't for long before they suffered sectarian abuse sometimes worse , 😳
mr Snankill Mr
The yard was based in east Belfast and many of the workers lived there and could walk or cycle to work. Many Roman Catholics fearing sectarianism didn't want to cross the bridge to go there. Unless uniquely qualified many jobs were subject to the petty nepotism of family recommendation, and apprentices or laborers didn't bunk off because it would harm the person recommending them. It was a vicious cycle keeping employment local and although the management may have gotten the blame for not taking on Roman Catholics they really wouldn't have cared so long as they did their work but there again neither did they want sectarian riots in the yard after some idiot politician made a speech, as Northern Ireland then was about divide and conquer, and the working man bore the brunt of the trouble.
I went to a Technical School in N.I. with Christians, Roman Catholics and others, and every one of us who wanted to get a trade got one back then, so not every employer cared about religion, just your potential.
As for the state of industry, I remember my last job as a fabricator. Among other things we made bespoke spacers for a German factory beside us, they cancelled the contract because Spain could provide them cheaper than we could buy the metal, God bless what became the EU. Then the German factory left because it didn't need to be based in the UK to trade there, so it went back home, our friends and colleagues of the EU.
@@wjf0ne appreciate you clearing that up man✌👍
Over the years a few bombs were detonated inside the yard,IRA tried to topple one of the cranes,there were a couple of bombs on the fort Victoria,and if I remember right an IRA member who planted the la Mon hotel bomb was working in the yard and they tried to assassinate him. In the early nineties a welder was shot and murdered on the job.
Master craftsmen never to be replaced what a place the skills and knowledge all gone
It's interesting for me because my father was born 1949 on Trafalgar Street Belfast, about a minutes walk from the shipyard, his father was a dock worker, he became a plumber my brother is a plumber I qualified as a carpenter, so the craftsmenship lives on 🤗
It's very sad, wot went wrong
@@andrewmorton395 Nothing went wrong. Shipbuilding progressed - no more rivets, now welding. Rivets were obsolete when this was filmed. Computer Aided Design replaced pencils. And the people who build ships today are every bit as skilled as the tradesmen in this film. And far more versatile. There is no future in buggy whip making or renting VHS tapes. Change is good.
@@briggsquantum Exactly but I understand peoples nostalgia.
Beautiful
And as always, the people who actually built the thing have to stand on the sidelines while people who never lift a finger in their lives, swan past...
😊😊
We shall never see such craftsmanship again , sad that it's gone. Great documentary I concur with GOLD comment. Thanks for your work.
TP Did some of these people wrong you in a previous life? You seem to be very bitter, did your mother not show you affection or love you enough. This video is about history, nothing sinister!
Absolutely brilliant very very skilled men No wonder they say it was the best shipyard in the world.
Lost my Father earlier this year..He was a Riveter/boiler maker in Hull.Would be employed for a day and then layed off when the job was finished..All piece work and they had to pay for the compressed air to knock the rivets down!..But work was plentiful back then with the fishing industry.When that disappeared the city went into terminal decline and my Dad had to travel the country for work...Usually in the steel works.
only industry after that in Belfast was bomb making but the British put a stop to that too...haha!
I served my engineering apprenticeship in the Southamton works of Harlands and this film brings back so many memories.
Class, I work in Belfast Docks. Love this stuff.
The car industry all but gone,the shipbuilding industry gone,the computer industry gone,the aircraft industry now a sub contractor to the French & Germans, everything just about gone.
And what do our Universities churn out in ever greater numbers.....graduates in sociology,racial awareness,human studies,football science,equal opportunities,political history,economics etc,etc,etc.the list is endless.Just as long as you steer clear of any subject that requires brains and will help get this nation out of the mess it has got itself into,but then just look at the morons we have in charge of us.The traditional two party system is and has been since 1945 not fit for purpose
Engineering skills have vanished to be replaced by computers and shopkeepers
My family on mum's side all worked here. My uncle Billy Irvine was in the time of this film. My Grandda was a riveter during war years. Very special thanks for sharing
Ask a person today what a shipwright is . Let alone with real hand tools and skill . How many guys doing the deck . Unreal . Thanks great footage
they where skilled workers not as much these days
the riveter/ caulker (welding killed off riveting) at 7.36 is Herbie Hutton
Brilliant video thanks, real craftstmen at work
Incredible . We can marvel at modern tech but what these guys achieved is stunning . Great that we have this archive . (BTW The music was chosen well.)
back gouging a butt with a diamond point,happy days
11:33 "Oh I say what a beautiful bouquet young man" - gives him a bar of chocolate!
How disrespectful!
Great pieces of film showing specialised riveting techniques including flushing off in way of the rubbing strake and a Caulker back-gouging a welded deck seam.
Agree, amazing to see different joining techniques in the fifties, riveting the hull and finishing the heads flush, while welding the deck plates
Amazing, and you know as you watch it'll only have a 20+ year life span, after all that craftsmanship and employment. She was beached and scrapped near Karachi, Pakistan in 1983.
Brilliant. What a loss to Belfast.
A fantastic watch - thank you
Thanks, fantastic piece, when Britain still had some great in her
America took alot of the british industry, churchill made a deal with them.
Yeah well our industries are gone too. Along with all the great paying union jobs they brought. So we're both fucked now.
Usa and Uk industry belong to dragon now your time is past
Wonderful times, such skills with pretty rudimentary tools. Hard graft.
Blows my mind that humans can build something of this complexity.
ps. I thought ships were welded by the 60s?
The size of the funnel intrigues me. The engine ( is that a two stroke diesel , ie with a blower?)was slow revving , I cant imagine the exhaust was was at high velocity , though no doubt pretty hot and voluminous. Did the funnel also house some kind of heat exchange unit for pre'heating inlet air or heating fuel or perhaps water ?
All main diesel engine built in Belfast up to 1960 were Opposed Piston 2 stroke under B &W license. Earlier engines were Double Acting 2 stroke opposed piston (3 pistons /cyl ) then later came Exhaust Valve 2 strokes turbo charged. They are direct drive 115 rpm, & direct reversing. Engine exhaust generates steam.
Any Catholic workmen in that video? Just asking for a friend 🙄.
The selection of music is marvelous however Barber’s Serenade for Strings was not really evocative fir the launching, whereas the Nimrod that followed the launch would have been more appropriate. Thanks for your efforts.
How big can you make an exhaust stack? Our door is 8 meters high, so anything less than that is possible.
They don't build ships like they used to.
Wee Picky Millers
Wonder why they stopped building ships in Belfast?
Passenger liners are a very profitable ship to build...gone now.. Oil tankers are just steel and machinery. Military vessels often need years of steady work to complete.
All ship construction was outdoors then and subject to weather.
Watching this as my dad worked here from the early 50's before moving to England, be strange if I spotted him!!