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William James Pirrie

1847–1924

 

For a long time, Ireland was seen only as an agricultural country.  When heavy industry did begin to develop it was around Belfast, contiguous with Clydeside.  This was in the heartlands of Presbyterian Ireland, and naturally an association was seen between its firm Scottish principles and the fecklessness endemic in other, more Catholic parts of the country.  This concentration of industry was to play a part in the eventual partition of the island in 1922.

      A key figure in the industrial development of Ireland, and of the shipping business worldwide, was William James Pirrie.  He was, in fact, born in Quebec in May 1847.  His parents, however, were Irish: James Alexander Pirrie came from Little Clandeboye, his wife from Antrim.  The boy was brought up back in Ireland at Conlig, near Belfast, where he went to school at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.

      When he left school at sixteen he entered the shipbuilding firm of Harland and Wolff as a pupil.  His native talent was soon manifest, and he was rapidly promoted, becoming a partner in 1874.  He was then only twenty-seven.  The rest of his life was spent at Harland and Wolff, which he saw grow into one of the most important shipbuilding companies in the world.  When it was converted into a limited liability company he became chairman of the board.

      Pirrie began his career at an opportune time.  The transition from wooden to steel-built ships was under way, and he followed, indeed promoted, many of the most important developments in the industry over the next few decades.  The shipping business was the making of Belfast.  In 1800 it was little more than a market town - the population was only 20,000.  The Queen's Island shipyard was opened in 1851, and by 1880 the population had grown to 230,000.  By 1901 the population was 348,965.  Whereas the population of Ireland as a whole was shrinking due to emigration, Belfast was happily expanding, with most of its citizens depending on the shipyard.  And by then, though much could be made of the city's radical past, it had become the centre of Protestant resistance to home rule.

      Though there had been giant ships before (Brunel's Great Eastern, for instance), Pirrie could be said to be the creator of the large modern ship.  As the decades advanced, the ships which the firm built grew larger and larger.  The Oceanic, the Celtic, the Cedric, and the Baltic were famous in their day.  This line of ships culminated in the Olympic (1912), the Titanic (1912), and the Brittanic (1914).  But these ships were unfortunate, the Titanic sinking on its maiden voyage in spectacular and famous circumstances; the Brittanic being sunk in the First World War while being used as a hospital ship.  That, too, was a mysterious event.  The superstitious spoke of a curse on the shipyard because of its intolerance to Catholic workers.

      Most of the advances made both with regard to the design of the ships and their engineering arose from suggestions made by Pirrie himself in these first decades of expansion.  As the ships grew in length and width he was conscious of the need to ensure strength in the frames through new methods of construction.

      The Pirrie ships were the first to place the passengers' accommodations amidships, and to create many of the arrangements and amenities now familiar to ocean-going liners.  There were also great changes on the engineering side.  New kinds of balance and expansion engines reduced vibration and improved efficiency.

      One important development was the change from coal-fired ships, which depended on a world-wide bunker system, to vessels that used oil and later diesel, engines.  This development was to have important consequences for the development of the oil industry, as marine shipping became a major consumer.

      The firm had connections with many important shipping companies, and was sole builder for the White Star Line in England and the Bibby Line in the United States.  It also built ships for the Peninsula and Orient line for use on routes to India and Australia, and for the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, among others.  As the ships and their capacity grew, the firm also emphasized the need for harbour facilities to develop in tandem.

      In 1902, Pirrie was one of the movers behind the creation of the Merchantile Marine Company, which brought many smaller interests on the North Atlantic routes into a more efficient conglomerate, or cartel.  Pirrie grew Harland and Wolff into a business filling 23 acres on the Belfast and Clyde shorelines, employing some fifty thousand men.  The First World War affected the yards dramatically.  Slipways were converted to war use, and gunboats and warships were built quickly.  A new airplane department was added as the fighter plane became the new instrument of war.

      In March 1918, Pirrie was made controller general of merchant shipping, in reaction to the effects of the German U-boat campaign against shipping on the Atlantic.  This he tackled with typical energy.

      Pirrie had been given a peerage in the House of Lords in 1906, and when the king visited Belfast to open the first sitting of the new parliament of Northern Ireland he was made a viscount.  He died at sea on 6th June 1924, while on a trip to see the ports of Latin America, and to urge the governments there to think of expanding their facilities to meet the rising trade in the post-war years.

      By 1922, 180 people had been killed in East Belfast in the sectarian struggles that arose over the partition of Ireland.  Again, in 1935 and in the 1960s troubles stalked the shipyards.  (This was the background to Ulster dramatist Sam Thompson's famous play Over the Bridge.)  The yards that Pirrie created became the core of the community strife in Northern Ireland.  But in serving the world-wide needs of shipping, he had also created the employment much needed by the Belfast community.  That the benefits would be shared by all was a problem beyond him to solve; that it was beyond the communities, too, is the tragedy of Ireland.  Yet, in August 1969, some eight thousand workers who remained in the Pirrie yards voted at a mass meeting to maintain 'peace and goodwill in the yard, and throughout the province'.  It may yet come.