Venice: Protesters challenge the return of cruise ships

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Harland & Wolff will now undertake works on P&O Cruises’ ship Aurora and Cunard’s Queen Victoria. When the work begins, the Queen Victoria will be the largest cruise ship ever to have dry docked in a UK yard. Prior to the planned work, the last cruise liner built by Britain was the Saga Ruby, built in 1973 in Newcastle upon Tyne.

The Saga Ruby retired from use in 2012.

Despite creating arguably the most famous cruise ship in history in the Titanic, which set sail in 1912, Harland & Wolff has more recently fallen on hard times.

They were saved from closure in 2019 by London-based energy firm InfraStrata, who paid £6million for the company.

An estimated £1bn of taxpayer money is estimated to have been pumped into the business over the years.

Chief executive John Wood said Monday’s contract meant Harland & Wolff was returning to cruise ship building for the first time in more than two decades.

The renowned ship builders were first founded over 150 years ago in 1861, by Edward Harland and his German business partner Gustav Wolff.

At its peak, the company employed 35,000 people.

It built 140 warships and 123 merchants during the Second World War, as well as over 500 tanks.

The company was nationalised in the 1950s, after a rise in the use of air travel resulted in a slump in demand for sea vessels.

The last cruise liner Harland & Wolff built from scratch was the Canberra in 1960.

However, the company was brought back into the private sector by 1989 by Fred Olsen, a Norwegian businessman known for his cruise empire of the same name.

The new contract for the famous shipbuilders came just a few weeks after the PM announced a new National Shipbuilding Strategy by dedicating £4bn of Government investment to support yards in Britain.

Boris Johnson said: “Shipbuilding has been in our blood for centuries and I want to ensure it remains at the heart of British industry for generations to come.”

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Mr Wood said that the cruise industry was a key target when InfraStrata bought Harland & Wolff.

He added: “Our facilities are ideally placed to capitalise on these types of large projects while we continue servicing our smaller but regular clients.

“We have now secured contracts in four out of our five markets; commercial, cruise & ferry, renewables and energy – we now look forward to completing the final milestone of securing a defence contract in the near future.”

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